Download Page 1 HERMES-IR Hitotsubashi University Repository Page 2 THE

Title
Author(s)
Citation
Issue Date
Type
The Two Constructions:"Accusative and Participle"
and "Genitive and Gerund"
Yamakawa, Kikuo
The Annals of the Hitotsubashi Academy, 8(1): 44100
1957-10
Departmental Bulletin Paper
Text Version publisher
URL
http://doi.org/10.15057/11850
Right
Hitotsubashi University Repository
THE TWO CONSTRUCTIONS :
" CCUSATIVE AND PARTICIPLE " AND
" ENITIVE AND GERUND "
A Diachronic-Synchronic Study in English Syntax
By Kikuo Yamakawa
Assisiant Professor of L ,eglish Phiioiogy
CHAPTER I
Introduction
S 1. l'n modern English syntax the two categories of
participle and the gerund, often offer delicate problems to
kinds of expression it appears so difficult to judge whether
is used as a pa'ticiple or as a gerund that some grammarians
verbals, the present
the students. In some
a form ending in -ing
or philologists think
it better not to recognize the separate categories but to unify them into one com-
'mon category, terming it "i,eg-form" or merely "ing."
It is true that from the morphological point of view the participle and the
gerund have been confused into one form -ileg on account of particular circumstances that have occurred in the history of the English language. But the
problem is whether they have been confounded in their syntactic functions or
stylistic values as well. Even those who have recourse to the common term
ieeg-form or ing cannot help admitting that there are many cases where each of
the two categories is used with the function very distinct from that of the other.
Beside these ordinary cases, those where the distinction seems difficult or impossible may be said to be only exceptional. The present researcher firmly stands
on the principle of recognizing the two separate categories. To him the two kinds
of i,cg-fornl are common to each other merely in their outer speech-form, but
in their intrinsic nature they should be absolutely separate from each other.
S 2. To make our point clear, we shall below mention some of the dubious
instances found in ModE.
(1) She had objected to him prayileg aloud in the evening.-Conrad.
Amy Foster. -
(2) I recollect my mother givilcg me three raisins.-Ruskin, Praelerita
[ Jespersen] .
These sentences may be interpreted in two manners according as the -ileg forms
are considered gerunds or participles. First, if praying and giving are taken
as gerunds, the sentences will be understood to mean (1) "She had objected to
1957j THE TWO CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE'" & "GENITIVE & GERUND ' 45
the fact that he prayed..." and (2) "I recollect that my mother gave...". This
interpretation is based upon the historical fact that the accusative or common
case, him and mother, has replaced the original genitive case, his and mother's.
The other interpretation is to regard praying and givileg as participles. Here
it must be noted that this is not because, as is often alleged, these participles
can be paraphrased into the attributive clauses : "who prayed or was praying "
and "who had given." Such paraphrasing would only produce a sense somewhat diflerent from the original. It is in this respect that we see an important
point concerning the theme of the present study.
S 3. Now let us compare the following example.
(1) At this point he had just caught sight of a pale object slipping under.
-Hardy, Lefe's Little lronies, "A Tragedy of Two Ambitions" vi.
In this sentence "srght of a pale ob]ect slippmg under" is certainly not equivalent to "sight that a pale object slipped or was slipping under." Slipping must
be understood as a participle. Yet is it all right that we should only paraphrase
"slipping under" into "that was slipping under"?
Admitting that such an -ing form is a participle as adjwact to the preceding
noun, it is involuntarily invested with the function of predicative at the same
time. The same function is discerned more clearly in the common pattern "I
saw him coming": but what we can say about coming either in "I caught sight
of him comileg" or in "I saw him coming" is that it is equally in the nature of
predicatival adjunct.
As contrasted with this loose adj unctive nature of the participle, the gerund,
as in "I insist upon Miss Sharp appearing," is more closely united with the preced-
ing noun. In the sentence "I insist upon Miss Sharp app aring," Miss Sharp
is combined with appearing so as; to become sense-subject of the latter. In this
way the two elements have semantically composed' a relation of subj ect and
predicate, what Jespersen calls leexus;
We must notice that in such a nexal unit the nucleal element is the gerund
rather than its sense-subj ect, as we can learn from the original form "Miss Sharp's
appearing." The following example is instructive in this respect.
(2) I don't believe in interfering with anybody else's doings, or anybody interferileg with mine.-S. Lewis, Arron'smith IX. iii.
Here the supplemental nature of anybody as sense-subject of the gerund interfering is especially apparent, contrasted with the use of the "subjectless" ileter-
fering that has appeared in the parallel phrase. We are distinctly shown the
syntactic characteristics of the gerund-construction as contrasted with those
of the participle-construction.
S 4. Furthermore, from the stylistic point of view, there should be a dis1 According to Jespersen, him comi'tg in "I saw him coming" is also a nexus. Accentuating the adjunctive nature ot the participle in general, however, we abstam trom applying the
term to such a participial combination. '
46 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMy [October
tinction between the participle and the gerund even in such inst nces as ( 1) and
(2) under S 2, where it appears indifferent whether the -ing fonn may be inter-
preted in either way. Such phenomena, however, are nothing but the result
of confusion, psychological as well as syntactical. The aim of the 'present study
is to elucidate as far as possible what has brought about the confusion in English syntax.
As available approaches to the research, we shall primarily resort to a di-
achronic method. ModE "I saw hwa coming" on one hand, and "I insist on his
comileg" on the other, surely represent the two lines of development which should
be traced back to the earliest period in the history of the English language.
We have found, howev. er, that the complicate reality can never be explained
away by the diachronic method alone. The fact is that most of the questionable
phenomena are mainly observed in the late ModE period, as we shall describe
in Chapter IV. The , solution of these requires a synchronical approach. The
factors should be sought for either psychologically or stylistically on the one
stage of the development. This is ,the secondary method we shall be forced to
In order to make matters less complicate, we shall testrict ourselves to the
treatment ,of those constructions where a participial ･or gerundial phrase functions as object of a transitive verb or a preposition. We shall exclude any instance where a participle or a gerund takes part in the subj ect of a sentence, such
as "Women having the vote share political power with men," though this involves
the important problem that concerns the constructions we are going to treat.
CHAPTER II
The Development of the "Accusative
'and Par,ticiple"' Construction
1. The OE Infinitive-Construction Compared
S 5. As in ModE the pattern 'il saw him coming" is parallel with the pattern
"I saw him come;"' so in OE the participle-construction seems to have been used
on the analogy of the infinitive construction. Having developed much more
verbal force and syntactic capacity, , the infinitive was used in this construction
more usually than the participle, as in :
Riett meowle seo hiere bearn gesihP brandas p eccale.-The Fates of.Met,
ll. 46 17. (A woman weeps who sees the flames cover her child.)
In OE such an expression was fairly ommon, app rently , through the influence of the Latm construction "accusativus cum mfimtivo." Here the infinitive
ecca,t (== cover) , following the combination of the predicate verb gesih'
p
(=sees) and its accusative object brandas (=flames), performs the function as
predicative of the object.
Now the similar function could also be performed by the present participle.
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & "GENITIVE & GERUND" 47
The meaning of the sentence above would har ly suffer any change if we were
to supplant the infinitive p eccmt by the participle ecceude (=covering) . .The
only conceivable differences would be that the participle, vith its adjunctive
nature, is appended to the preceding noun somewhat more loosely than the infinitive, and that the former displays more descriptive force than the latter,with
its inherent aspect denoting a durative or imperfective action. In spite of these
differences, however, the two constructions have remained parallel with each
other in their structural procedure, which is distinct from that of the gerundial
construction.
S 6. Before inquiring into actual instances in OE, we shall compare the
expression with that in the main allied languages German and French, so as to
clarify the peculiarity of the participle-construction in English. In both German and French we can find the "accusative and infinitive" construction as well
as in English, but in neither of them the "accusative and participle" construction. The two English sentences 'q saw the dog swilie across the river" and
"I saw the dog s ,imming across the river" must be translated into German in
one' way of using an infinit,ive,: "Ich sah den Hund fiber den Fluss sch ;immen."
If we specially want to express in German the durative or imperfective aspect
of the action "swimming" that the second English sentence succeeds in expressing so exquisitely, we shall have to use a subordinate clause in this way : "Ich
sah,
,ie der Hund uber den Fluss schevamm."2
Again, the meaning of the English "I see the dog ruaming" as well as "I see
the dog ru,t" must be .expressed in French by means of an infinitive: "Je vois
le chien courir," or otherwise with a relative clause: "Je vois le chien qui courL"3
These instances show not only that English is equipped . with a concise and
convenient means of expression as contrasted with German or French, but also
that the English expression with the participle is more precise and expressive
in conveying the, delicate shade of meaning, and is so much the greater in linguis-
tic value, than the corresponding expression in the two other languages. At
the same time it must not be overlooked that such syntactic and stylistic potentiality4 exhibited by the present participle in this construction can be traced
back to the earliest . stage in the history of the English language.
2. The "Accusative and Participle" in OE
S 7. The use of a present participle in OE could be distinctly discerned by
its representative ending -elide (cf. OHG -anti) , the form in West Saxon, in which
dialect the best part of the OE Iiterature was written and has ' been preserved.
'
*
'
the
13runner, Die englische Sprache n. p. 361.
Regula. Grwadlegul4g und Gru,rdprobleme der Syntax S 54 ll.
It is the same potentiality of the participle that has contributed to develop the usage of
so-called progressive form, as in "The dog is rwanileg," which was also originated in the
OE period and whose exact correspondent has never been found in any other language. Cf.
Moss . F. P. II. S 79.
48 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
The construction "verb+0bject+parficiple" was' found in the earliest period.
Only, , vhile in ModE the introductory verbs are of several kinds (cf. S 19), in
OE the construction was niore limited and chiefly introduced by verbs of sensuous
or mental perception, that is, geseole (=see) , gehieran5 (=hear) , gemeian6 ( =find),
etc.
(1) Hie Drihten 5esaze'on mpasti5elrdlee.-Blickling Homilies [Brunnerj.
(They saw the Lord ascending.)
(2) He geseah nne man sittende
t toll-sceamule.-Matt. ix. 9. (He
sa v a man sitting at the toll-seat.)
(3) pa m negu wundredon geseonde7 dumbe speceude.-Matt. xv. 31.
(The multitude wondered when ' they saw the dumb s eaking.)
(4), {)a gehyrdon hyne twegen leorningcnihtas sprece,rde. IJohn i. 37.
(Then , the twb disciples heard him speaki,ng.), '
5) ' Heo gem tte pat m den on hyre bedde licgende.-Mark vii. 30.
'
(She found the maiden lying on her bed.)
In these examples the present participles appended to the accusative nouns
and pronoun also stand in the accusative case so as to denote their adjunctive
relation to the objects. The accusative case is externally clear in the ending
-1ee of_ upasti5endne in example (1). The formal denotation of the case in such
predicative participles, however, was often obliterated already in this period,
as is seen in sitlende of example (2) , where the ending -eude fails to distinguish
the form from that of the nominative case. But it remains ture that the participle was in the accusative, whether explicitly or implicitly. This fact shows
that the participle is added to the preceding noun or pronoun adjunctively, though
it has involuntarily come to appear as predicative of the latter. Here is revealed
the concrete cumulative style of arranging the elements of the sentence one after
another according to the succession of the ideas-the style characteristic of
traditional English syntax. It may be of some interest in this respect to notice
that Koch (Satzlehre S 89) paraphrases the part "geseonde dumbe specende" in
example (3) into the German constniction with a subordinate clause: "als sie
sah, dass die Tauben sprachen."
S 8. The few examples cited in the previous section seem to suggest that
this kind of construction is especially frequent in the Vest-Saxon verSion of the
5 OED (s.v. HEAR 3) notes that the present participle used after "hear+0bject" is originally
a "verbal substantive (i,e. gerund) with a-." Though the dictionary itself records no example
illustrative of this statement, the following may be mentioned as instances of "hear+0bject+
gerund (cf. "The house is building.").
(1) Ann]e seem'd to hear her own death-scaffold raising.-Tennyson, Enoch Arde,e 175.
(2) I had never heard one(=a cofiin) making,-Dickens, David Copperfleld ix.
But these special phenomena with the passival -ing form have nothing to do with the enlightenment of the origin in regard to the form after hear.
G The verb has survived as ModE meet. ¥Vith OE findan ( =find) the "accusative and infinitive" consi:ruction was a usual one. The use, however, has become obsolete, and a particrple is now usually used instead of an Infinitive after find.' Cf. OED, s.v. FIND v. Ib.
T This geseoude (cf. the infinitive geseon) is another participle, which functions as predica-
tive in the relation of apposition to the subject
a m negu.
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS:"ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & "GENITIVE & GERUND" 49
Gospels. The version was accomplished in the late OE period, 'extehding from
the last decade of the tenth century to the middle of the- elevehth centuly,
based up6n the two Latin texts, the Vulgaie and the et s lialica.8 , ' ive have
good reason,' therefore, to infer that the frequency of the c6nstruction may be
due to the influence of the Latin model.9 The fact is that we can find the same
use of ･the' present participle in the Latin sentence corresponding to the OE example cited as (2) in the previous section. Below lef us quote the Latin originals,ro
Vulgate' Vidit hominen sedenlem in telonio. '
'
etus Italica, Vidit hominen sede,etem ad telonium. ' '
Sedeletem in either text is the ' accusative case of the present ･participle sedeles, the
infinitive
･being sedere (=sit). ' ･' . ) ' , '
The Latin influence should be surely regarded as an important factor
for
the origin of the construction in English. But concerning'the later development,
we must acknowledge, the 'potentiality inherent in English 'syntax itself.
3. oniht u;eseude / be him It:fgelidum
S 9. With respect to the construction observed in the previous sections,
we should like , to mention the two OE idiomatic ex ressions in eith r of which
a present participle is an essential component. Th firs is : the phrase oniht le!e-
sende, used in the following way. ' . ' ' .-. . ' " .
, ･
(1) S gde he p t he hine oneoht
'eosende gesawe.-Bede II. ･ xv. ' (He'
said that he had seen it when 'a boy.) ' 2) Ic hine cti e c, iht weseude.-Beowulf 372.: (1
-. ' ' ='
ndw 'hiin as a bo .)
If the ･ phrase oniht te!esende is construe4 according ' to the ofiginal function,
we-may say that the noun oniht (=boy.) is a complem'ent of the present participle
,ese,rde (=being) , which is appositively related to a preceding noun or ' pron'oun.
So the participle re'eselide, though devoid of the descriptive force' perceived in
usual participles, .p rforms･ the･ same syntactic function, when it is'related to the
obJect of a transitrve verb as comeleg m "I saw hun coming " In example (1)
weosende is appositive to the subject he.' while in exainple (2j 'esende is related
to the object hine (=him), forming thus the "accusative and ･ participle" con-
struction. . . . .
Hitherto we have considered the structural side of the phrase,oniht u'eseude.
But it seems to be more important to inquire into the semantic or lexical side of
this particular expression. As is the case with similar phenomena in early English, the coynbinatioh of the two elements in oniht
'eseude is cl0 ely fixed. Between
them there is no longer any sense of free syntactic relation, as we feel between '
u'as and a boy in the ModE expression "when he u'as a boy." -Indeed cniht and
ze,eselrde are combined so fixedly that many editors or lexicographers print the'
8' webelcourt,
Initiaiion
S29,
ft.in 2.
' - 'statement
' ･ given
:
can find an authentic
confirmation ot this
Inference
the detailed
in Canaway. The Infinitive iu A=ngio-Sa;ron p. 225 ff. - ' '
lo
p. crt. S61. Also compare S20.
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
50
[October
combination as one,compound word "cleiht-u'esende" or "cniht 'ese,ide" and rank
it as an adjectiye. Indeed the similar, though poetic, expression "umbor (=child)
'esende" is used in the inflected form of an adjective in the following example.
(3) Wene ic. p t he mid gode gyldan wille uncran eaferan, gif he t
eal gemon, hw t wit to willan ond to wor myndum umbor weseudum r arna
gefremedon.-Beoze'edf I 18 7. (1 think that he will reward the sons of us
two with goodwill, if he remembers all of what favours we once did to his
pleasure and hono LLrs when he was a child.)
H re te'esen.dum is in the dative case in concord with ze'illan and u!Or mylidum,
though serrLantically we should r,ather say that it is appositive to the unexpressed.
him, the personal sense of which is implied by the two dative nouns. Anyhow
eembor has lost its status as an,independent word and been attached to
'esendum
so as to forrn part of the one adj ective.
Cleiht- 'ese,ide or umbor-weseude was merely a fixed, short-1ived formula,
destined to become obsolete within the period of OE. That is true, but the phenomenon seems to be suggestive of the early stage in the history of the constructions that we go on investigating. Compare SS 36, 37, 40.
S 10. The other OE phrase that deserves our attention is be him lifgendum.
The literal meaning of it is "by him livmg " Be ( by) here denotes a temporal
relation and means "during" in ModE, him is the dative governed by the preposition be, and lifgeudum is a participle, also inflected in the dative case, derived
from lifgan (=live) and is placed in apposition to him. The stnking feature is that
the whole group has been invested with a particular sense "during his lifetime."
Before inquiring into further detai:Is, Iet us see some actual examples.
(1) Constantinus...be Diocletiane lyfgeudum Gallia rice and Ispania heold
and rehte.-Bede I. vili. (Constantinus held and swayed the kingdom of
Gaul and Spain in the lifetime of Diocletianus.)
(2) Hie be him lifgeudum hieu ged Idun.-The Anglo-Saxot, Chronicle
(A) 7 18. (They parted during their lifetime.)
(3) Se Wulfwi feng to am biscoprice pe Ulf h fde be him libbendum and
of adr( fdum.-Ibid. (C) 1053. (The aforesaid Wuliwig succeeded to the bishopric that Ulf had during his lifetime and exile.)
Example (3) is especially noticeable. The present participle libbendum ( <libban live) , a variant of lifgelidum, is co-ordinately connected by of adra fdomt. The
latter is a past particip, Ie and is in the same dative case as the former. Adr( fdum
is the dative past participle of adrenfale (=drive away, expel) ; and the preceding
adverb of (=0fi, away) is prefixed.to the main word so as to fonn part of a compound after the fashion of OE syntax. So of-edr(efdum, meaning literally "driven
away," as well as libbelidum (=1iving) , is appositively appended to him.
This indicates that the phrase be him l fge,ideem was not altogether felt as
a set formula. It represents a type of syntactic combination in OE. Moreover it
** This hie is an accusative used as reflexive object of geda Idun (or gedcIdon), plural preterite of (ge)d(
la'a (=divide).
1957] THE Tla'O CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & ,'GENITIVE & GERUND"
51
seems instructive to us that here is, revealed an essential characteristic in early
English syntax. In this combination each significant element is accumulated one
after another, so that the intended meaning is analyticauy expressed with simple
concreteness,
S I I . It must be admitted that there is another way of explaining the OE
phrase "be him lifgendum."I2 In OE the construction with a so-called dative
absolute was fairly common, mostly due to the influence of the ablative absolute
construction in Latin. In the following example the italic part is a dative absolute.
Hym
a gyt sprecelidwa, hig comon fram pam heahgesamnungum.-
Mark v. 35. (While he was still speaking, they came from the chief synagogue.)
The combination hym sprecendum in this sentence implies a temporal adverbial
relation to the main statement "hig comon... ." If we were to convey the implied
sense of temporal relation more explicitly, we should have recourse to some
formal means expressive of it. Be in be him lifgelidum can be interpreted as a
demanded means that has been added t,o express more clearly the temporal relation
implied by the dative absolute "him lifgendum."I3
Even if this second explanation may be admitted, we can still see the same
characteristic in the style of expression "be him lifgendum"-appositional･ and
so primitively concrete. But the expression scarcely survived in the ME period.
4. The Morphological Change of the Present
Participle in ME
S 12. Before entering into the observation of the construction in ME we
should like to survey how the form of the present participle got confused with
that of the gerund in -ing in the course of the ME period. Generally speaking.
the variant forms of the present participle in ME properly inherited from OE
were -ilide in the Southern dialect, -eude in the Midland dialect, and -aud(e) in
the Northern dialect. Already in the early part of the thirteenth century the
old form of the present participle began to be supplanted by the new fonn -ilcg(e),
which had been the original ending of the verbal substantive or gerund. This
supersession first took place in the Southern dialect (except the Kentish) , then
in the Midland, and finally in the Northern. In The Ozvl aud the Nightilegale,
a poem written in the Southern dialect in 1225, there appears -iltge concurrently
with -ilrde. There is the trace of fluctuation between -ynde and ynge in Langland's Piers Plote,malb (Text C) , a long poem written in the West Midland dialect
in 1393; while Chaucer's poems (1365-99), representative of the East Miland
diale-ct, are decidedly in favour of -yng. In the Northern dialect we still see -alrd
:: M tzner, E1cglische Grammatih 111. p. 78.
¥Ve might here compare the following example, where be has been added to a dative al>
solute phrase which has no participle in it and denotes an attendant circumstance.
Gif elles be cwicum ,nameum ciricgri5 abrocen beo... .-A ,ecie,et Laws aud Instiiutes of
Englatid [A.-S. D., Sup.] (If otherwise the sanctuary be broken through by the men living,
i.e. without anybody belng killed,....)
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
52
[October
in Cursor Memdi (1300-40), but yet in Misyn's Documents of Yorkshire in the
fifteenth century -aud and -ileg are used promiscuously. It may be cursorily
concluded that the use of the new form -ileg(e) went on expanding from the end
of the fourteenth century down to the fifteenth century, finally contaminating
the Northern dialect,14
S 13. It would be both interesting and instructive now to inquire into the
factors that had brought about the phonological and morphological confusion
between -eud and -ileg. There are three factors to be considered.
( 1) Special significance should be attached to the fact that the confusion
first took place in the Southern .dialect, where the old traditional form of the
present participle was -ilide, a form weakened from OE -eude. As the ending
of the gerund, on the other hand, -if'g had been retained in the Southwestem
dialect till about 1250, but after that the form was scarcely found, the ending
-ileg having been generally established (cf. S 33). Moreover there was a grow'ing
tendency to confuse -ilide, as the ending of the present participle, with -ilege in
the Southern (except Kentish) dialect about that time.
Now it is inferred that the Southern participial form -ilrde had the least resistance to be superseded by -ilcge ; the dther forms -elide and -alrd(e) were retained
much longer, in clear contrast with the gerundial form lyng or -ing. The reason
may be easily ascribed to the phonetic contiguity between the two forms -inde
and -inge.15 The process from -ud [nd] to -1eg, which is suppQsed to represent
the sound [og], is merely the result of the simple substitution in the points of
articulation, that is, the shifting from alveolar to velar. F urthermore we may
assume that the substitution had been greatly prompted by the presence of the
preceding vowel i, for in the points of articulation [i] is much closer to the velar
[O] than to the alveolar [n] . In short, it was phonetically easier to pass frorn
-iud to -ing than to pass from -eud or -and to -i,eg.
(2) Besides the articulatory assimilation of [ind] to [iOg] , there is another
phonetical process to be assumed.16 The pronunciation of both -iud(e) and -ileg(e)
had already. become indistinct in th thirteenth century, and it is probable that
both the endings were soon pronounced [inf] with the paratalized I . The
morphological confusion can be attributed to this phonological levelling.
We should be reminded, in this respect, that the modern dialects of Northumberland and the southern counties of Scotland have preserved the formal distinction of a present participle and a gerund, but that with the general obscuration of the final consonants, the endings have resulted in most cases in [-en]
(<-aud) on one hand and [-in] (<-ileg) on the other.17
The two phonetical factors mentioned about under (1) and (2) must not be
It The description in this section mainly depends upon Moss6, F.P. ll. SS 131-139.
15angenhove.
Moss6.
F.P.
, Die englische Sprache I. p.
The Origin
of theII.
Gerund S
S 2.156.
3. 5 (c) ,
: Brumer,
16
169, II. p. 349.
IT OED s,v_ -ING:.
1957] THE TWo CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIVE & GERUND 53
considered separately. They probably acted simultaneously, reciprocally influencing each other, to bring about the confusion.
(3) The next to be considered is an external factor. OED (s.v. -ING2) says
that the confusion between -i,ide and -inge "is specially noticeable in MSS. written
by Anglo-Norman scribes in the thirteenth century." As we shall see in some
examples quoted in the following sections, there were a number of works in those
days which had been translated, either directly or indirectly, from the originals
written in Old French or Norman French. It is very likely that the scribes of
those translations were often encumbered by the confused use of the French verbal
ending in -antrs when they were going to express a present participle or a gerund
in English. From the geographical situation, we can judge that the effect of
the scribal influence was most apparent in the literature of Southern England.
These are the factors that were considered to cause the confusion of -inde
and -inge in the Southern dialect. Here we see the reason why the transition
of -elrd to -ileg took place later in the Midland and Northern dialects, which are
usally more radical in morphological changes.
5. " Verb+0bject+participle " in ME
S 14. We are in a position to observe 'the actual exaniples of the "accusa-
tive and particrple" construction found m ME. The farther we advanced into
the ME period, the wider we came to see the construction expanded in use. The
commonest kind ' of verbs that introduced it were, as in OE (cf. S 7) , verbs of
sensuous or mental perception. Let us frst cite the examples containing this
(1) He sa ' 'his wyves moder liggylege and shakun.-Wyclif, Matt, vlii.
14. (He saw his wife's mother lying and shaken.)
(2) He saugh a mayde walkil,ge him biforn.-Chaucer, C. T., "The Tale
of the Wyf of Bathe" 30. (He saw a maid walking before him.)
(3) In erth I see bot syn reynaud.-The To "eeley Mysteries ((c. 1450))
llatsner]. (On earth I see only sin reigning.)
(4) I haue seyne Charite also syngen and reden, Ryden and rennen in
ragged wedes, Ac beddyleg as beggeres bihelde I hym neuere.-Langland,
Piers Plowmau (B) xv. 219-221 ((1377)). (1 have seen Charity also sing
and read, ride and run in ragged garments, but I never beheld him begging
as beggars.)
(5) ' I herde thi fader spekynge.-Wyclif, Gen. xxvii. 6. (1 heard thy
father speaking.) ,
(6) When that she hereth any herde tale Or in the hegges any wight sler-
inge, . . . .
-Chaucer, Troilus aud Criseyde iii. 1235-6. (When she i.e, the
nightingale hears any shepherd speak or any person stirring in the hedges,....)
(7) We herel
18
hors nygenge and cokkes crou'ilege.-The Voiage aud Travaile
ompare the second footnote (5 1) under S 38.
54 THE ' ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
of Sir Johe, Maundeville ((c. 1400)) [Koch] . - (We hear horses neighing and
(8) He fooude hem slepinge.-Wyclif, Mait. xxvi. 40. (He iound them
sleeping.)
(9) He..Jaud him slou'mand on slepe.-The Wars of Alexauder ((c. 140050)) [Koziol]. (He found him sleeping.)
Of the examples above, the flrst four contain the verb "see" or its synonym
behold" the next three the verb "hear " and the last two the verb "find." In
example (1) the present participle liggylege (=1ying) is used co-ordinately with
' the past participle shakun (=shaken). In example (3) we had the old participial
form reynand. This is because the work from which this passage is quoted was
written in Yorkshire, where, as in the other districts in North England, the form
in -alid had been retained in the fifteenth century. Examples (4) and (6) present
a common syntactic feature. In (4) the sentence including a participle-construction is co-ordinated by ac (=but) with a parallel sentence including an inflnitive-
construction introduced by the predicate verb haue seyne (=have seen). In
(6) the verb hereth introduces the two co-ordinate expressions combined by or,
where the participle slerilcge (=stirring) appears in the same functional position
as the infinitive lale (=tell a tale) . These phenomena show that the "accusative an'd participle" construction had been becoming as popular as the "accusative ' and infinitive" construction (cf. S 5) . It is moreover conceivable that the
participles ' here have displayed the ' special descriptive value with their imperfec-
tive aspect, as contrasted with the perfective aspect implied by the infinitives,
though in ' such poetic examples we should also recollect the metrical influence
upon the expression.19
S 15. In ME it was riot only verbs of perception that were used to introduce
the construction in question. Below we shaJl cite some examples that contain
other kincLs of verbs.
(1) Thus left me that lady liggyng aslepe.-Langland, Piers Plo !man
(B) ii. 51 ((c. 1377)). (Thus that lady left me lying asleep.)
(2) I Iefte hem ' Iyynge there.-Chevalere Assigne ((a. 1400)) [Koziol]. (I
left them lying there.)
(3) Lele I this noble prince Theseus Toward Athenes in his wey rydilege.
-Chaucer. Anelida a,id Arcite 45 46 ((c. 1374)). (1 will leave this noble
prince Theseus riding on his way towards Athens.)
(4) A man that is joyous and glad in herte, it him col,serveth florishinge
in his age. Chaucer. C.T. ((c. 1386)) [Matsner]. (...in heart, it conserves
him flourishing....)
*"
ompare the following ModE examples :
(1) Thee I have heard relating what was done Ere my remembrance : now hear me relate
My story, which, perhaps, thou hast not heard.-Milton. Paredise Lost viii. 203-205.
(2) I see women marryiug indiscriminately with staring burgesses and ierret-faced, whiteeyed boys, and men dwell in contentment with noisy scullions, or taking into their lives
aciduous vestals.-Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque i.
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "Ac USATIVE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIVE & GERUND 55
(5) My dowte dothe aprevyn Cryst levylege fful bolde.-Ludus Coventriae
((14. . )) [Matsner ･ (My doubt does approve Christ living very boldly.)
The verb leave, as in examples (1) and (2), began to be used in the thirteenth
century in the construction where its object is followed by some appositive
adjunct, meaning either 'iallow to remain" as here or more concretely "depart
from."'20 The present participle has naturally performed the function as such
an appositive adjunct of an object.
In example (3) the predicate verb lete (=1et) , which is usually accompanied
by a bare infinitive as objective complement, would now appear curious in introducing a participle-construction. The meaning here denoted, however, is
not causative ; Iete is rather synonymous wath "leave " The present partrcrple
rydinge implies the durative state of a person denoted by the object "this noble
prince Theseus." We can see that the sense of ModE Iet has been specialized
as compared with that of the verb in Chaucer's age.zi
The use of the verbs in examples (4) and (5) seem to be somewhat special
even in ME. Conserveih in (4) would be replaced by keeps in ModE. The meaning of (5) would usually be expressed in ModE by the construction : ." . approve
Chnst to be lrvmg " (cf OED s.v. AppROVE v.1 4).22 Nevertheless these special
cases show the potentiality of the present participle that has enabled the "accusative and participl " construction to become so popular in the ModE peri04-
S 16. The peculiar ME use of the present participle in the Same function
is seen with factitive or causative make, which is now usually used with a bare
infinitive as obj ective complement.
(1) New tithand That makes me ful wele lykand.-The Proces of the Sevi,
Sages ((c. 1320)) [Matsner]. (The new message that makes me very well
pleasing.)
(2) Some men wille noght understande, pat at mught mak pam dredalide.
-Rolle of Hampole, The Pricke of Conscience ((c. 1340)) [Koch]. (Some
people will not understand that that might make them dreading.)
' (3) Pe sternes pou made on pe sky staudaude and the plan ttes in peire
course passaud' e.-Religious Pieces ile Prose alid Verse ((c. 1440)) [Koch].
(Thou made the stars standing in the sky and the planets passing in their
course.) '
" OED s.v. LEAVE v.1 3d, 7b. Also compare example (10) under S 20 and example (1) under
S 23.
** In the fonowing example lete seems to introduce a similar construction, but actuany
rominge ( =roammg) should be viewed in another hght.
And thus I iete him sitte up-oh the pyrie. And Januarie and May romilege myrie.-Chaucer.
C.T., "The Marchantes Tale" 973-4. (And thus 1 Ieave him sitting on the pear-tree, with
January and May roaming merrily.)
The phrase Introduced by the second "and" is not dependent on the predicate verb iete, but
is rather Independently attached to express an attendant circumstance like an "absolute construction."
" The form aprevy (cf. OED, s.v. AppREVE) is the northern nd especially Scottish equlvalent b'f aprove (=approve). lt is originany the adapted iorin of' OF a(p)preuve. the tonic
stem of aprover.
56 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
The present participles above, which all happen to appear in the old distinct
form -alid(e) in the examples quoted from the Northem or Midland works, seem
to be what have been turned into. adjectives rather than the original verbals.
Especially, Iykaud (=Pleasing) and dredalide (=dreadful) in examples (1) and
(2) clearly denote permanent static conditions, not imperfective actions or movements.
In any case, this use of the present p rticiple has now become obsolete.
Instead we should now use ei her a real adjective if some resultant state is to
be' expressed as predicative of the pbject, or a bare infinitive if we are to express
an action of one agent, caused by another. Unlike an infinitive, in general, a
present participle ordinarily denotes the durative and imperfective aspect of an
action, and so is un t to express an ingressive or effective action involved by
the causative sense of the verb "make."
As a rare instance of fodE, which seems a remnant of the ME usage here
described, we can cite :
(4) What makes the bread rising?...What makes the mutton five-pence
a po.und?-Goldsmith, The Good-Natur'd Man in.
The participle rising in "What makes the bread rising?" is capable of implying
the current situation that the price of the bread is really rising, so that it has a
Imique emantic value that cannot be perceived in the infinitive rise. Although
the expression may sound rather curious to a present-day speaker, a light, vivid
and expressive style is displayed in this short sentence.a3
6. "Preposition+0bject+participle" in ME
S,.17t' Just .as a transitive verb introduces.an "accusative al:Id particljple"
construction , so a preposition can be used as an introductory word for the same
ponstructiorp . The latter usage, h9wever, was only gradually developed in the
ME peripd (cf. S lO). . VVith is the chief preposition in this use.
(1) Pe stok nest pe roote growand Es the heved ze'ith nek folowaud.Rolle of Hampole,-The Pricke of Conscience ((c. 1340)) [Curme]. (The stock
growing next the rppt is the head with the neck following.)
(2) Ho ra5t hym a riche rynk...With a starande ston stolrdalide alofte.
-Sir Gau'aile aud the Green Kleight ((c. 1360)) [Koziol] . (She reached him
a rich man with a glittering stone standing aloft.)
(3), Upon hir humble face he gan biholde, With fadres. pitee stiking thurgh
his herte.-Chaucer, C.T., "The Phisiciens Tale" 21C 1 ((c. 1386)). (Upon
her humble face he beheld, with the father's pity sticking through his heart.)
(4) All his shelde' was tb shew shynyng of gold, Wiih pre lions lyvely
laetlechouud perin.-The Gesi Hystoriale of the Destructiau of Troy ((c. 1400))
's Besides OED (s.v. MAKE v.1 45) records a special obsolete idiom concerning falconry
"make a hawh flyi'eg" as in:
n you woulde make your hawke fleing to the Partridge, or Feasant, . . . .-Turbervile, FauiL
conrie ((157S)].
' '
1957]
THE TWO CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE"' & ,'GENITIVE & GERUND" 57
[Koziol] . (All his shield was to show the shining of gold, with three lions
lively leaping therein.)
(5) Oure inhabetting...is an llee...With ryna,id all aboute our erd an
endles wattre.-The Wars of Alexander ((c. 1400-50)) [Koziol] (Our dwelling is an island with an endless water touching all about our ground.)
The construction began to be seen in the fourteenth century,24 and as we
shall observe later (S 25) , has kept on gTowing lustily in the ModE period. That
the -ing form there is a present participle, not a gerund, is evidently proved by
the form -aled(e)'in the examples, except (3) , which are cited from the works written
in Northern England or Northwestern Midland. Functionally it is adjunctively
related to the preceding, or, as in example (5) , following, noun and at the same
time adds some complementary predication about the latter. The noun, in
turn, is connected with the preposition with to the main part of the sentence.
The construction represents an additional or cumulative style of expressionthe style so characteristic of the tradition of English syntax.
S 18. It is possible to interpret the u,ith-construction as the more explicit
substitute for the "nominative absolute," which had been 'turned from the "dative
absolute" in OE. Similar interpretatioh has been described concerning OE be
him lifgelidum in S I I . In view of the general 6quival6ncy we may admit the
theory that the two constructions have been fused ; yet' it must be noticed that
there is a striking difierence in the stylistic features between them. The ze,ith-
construction has far more natural adaptability to grow on in English syntax
than the absolute construction.
As to the nature of this construction, furthermore. Kellner (Historical Outlil,es of English Syntax S 154) says that it "has a certain resemblance to that used
in Gothic and Old Norse." as if to suggest the presence of some influence exerted
by those old Germanic languages. Whatever origin it may be primarily ascribed
to, the expression "ze,ith nek folou,aud" is so characteristic of English syntax that
we may safely afflrm with Curme (Syntax p. 156) that "rt rs native English
7. " erb+0bject+participle" in ModE
S 19. In ModE the use of the "acctisative and participle" construction
has become much more wide-spread. It has been introduced not only by verbs
of perception but by severaL other , kinds of verbs. In the syntactic use of these
verbs, we see a remarkable parallelism between the two constructions "accusative and infinitive" and "accusative and participle" aj; in. the
of sentences.
following couples
I .saw him come. I don't lihe him lo go thefe. .
I sau, him coming. I. don't like him going . there. .
ED'(s.v. WrrH'prep. 36) records the one example belonging to the late thirteent century
though it contains an adjective instead of a present participle. It is:
Wlth_ one* haltre ope pe mere forth rod 'pis holi man.-The Early South-English Legendarv ((c. 1290]). (With one halter open this ho]y man rode the mare forthJ
s*
58
[OctobeT
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
It is ' evidently ttue that the participle-construction has made rapid advance
especially since the beginning of the ModE period, so much so that it seems as
if it had been endeavouring to vie and catch up with the infinitiye-construction.
In this respect we cannot agree with the remark of Koch (Satzlehre S 133)
that the participle-construction has been gradually displaced by the infinitive-
construction. Although we cannot help admitting the concise facility of the
infinitive-construction, the fact is that the present participle has been and will
be growing in this use with its inherent pbtentiality, both semantic and stylistic.
Now it would be convenient to classify the introductory verbs into three
groups from the semantic point of view,25 so that we ,may be able to arrange the
examples more systematically. Those groups are :
a. Verbs of sensuous or mental perception, such as see, hear,find,feel, observe,
watch, perceive, notice, caich, etc.
b. Verbs that imply or involve a durative state, such as leave, keep, have,
get, send, etc.
c. Verbs of psychological state or activity, such as understand, remember,
recollect, imagilee, fancy, Iike, hate,
,ant, etc.
Of these groups of verbs, we can first notice that only a few belonging to
groups a and b are in the same use as in OE and ME, but all the others have come
to be newly used with the construction in the ModE period. It is true that many
of them mtroduce the "accusative and mfinitive" construction as well, but we
must also observe that some belonging to groups b and c, such as keep, remember, recollect, etc., can only be used with the "accusative and participle" construction.
S 20. First we shall see the examples quoted from works in the first three
centuries of the ModE period. Most of them show the continuation of･the usage
in OE and ME which contains such verbs as see, hear, fuid, Ieave, etc. There
must also be exemplified the use of the important verbs feel, observe, keep and
imagine, which has newly been found in ModE. The examples will be arranged
according to the groups of verbs mentioned in the previous section.
a. (1) Sone after none thys mother...Sau'e from the body, the soule de-
partynge.-Prymer ilc Englysche aud Laten ((1536)) [OED]. (Soon after
noon this mother saw the soul departing from the body, i.e. of her son.)
(2) And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saze' a man, named Matthew,
sitting at the receipt of custom.-A. V.. Matt. ix. 9 ((1611)).
(3) As I heard once a doctor of Divinite...earnestly defeudyleg his cause
with examples... .-T. Wilson, The Rule of Reason ((1551)) [OED].
(4) I hear him coming.-Shakespeare, Haml. m. i. 55 ((1600-1)).
(5) O, thus I' found her, straying in the park. Seekin
to hide . herself.-
ld.. Tit. A. m.'i. 8 89 ((159e 4)).
(6) I:.,find thee knowing not of beasts alone,..,but of thyse ･-Milton,
'* The classification, however, is far trom strict. n should be understood, tor instance,
that find and fed sometimes have the sense that ought to make them belong to group c.
1957] THE TWO CON5*TRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & ,"CENITIVE & GERUND 59
Paradise Lost viii. 437-9 ((1667)).
'
7) When the Genowayes felt the Arrowes pearcyng (=piercing) thorough
their heads, armes and breastes... .-Grafton, A Chronicle of Englaud ((1568) )
[OED] .
(8) Then all on a sudden (1) felt lhyself falling perpendicularly down for
above a minute.-Swift, "Works" [Jespersen] .
(9) It was there, from the window, that the young lady happened to
observe one of my little boys playing in the street.-Goldsmith. The Vicar
of Wakefield xxxi ((1766)).
As to example (2) some comment should be made. In Tindale's version
of 1526, earlier than the Authorized Version from which the quotation has been
taken, the infinitive is used in this very passage instead of the present participle,
in this way: "...he sawe a man sytt (=sit) at the receyte off custume... ' '. According" to Delcourt (Initiaiio,e S 141), the infinitive here is used only by Tindale and
Coverdale (whose version was published in 1535) , every other biblical translator,
eithel older or newer, having" recourse to the plesent participle.26 This proves
that t e participle is more adapted to the context than the infinitive in spite of
the syntactic parallelism of the two verbals.27
Example (5) should also be noticed in that there is an apparent pause (print-
ed as a comma) between found her" and straymg." This phenomenon reveals
that the participle in this construction is intrinsically adjunctive and is liable to
be connected with the preceding noun or pronoun more loosely than is the gerund
or even the infinitive in similar constructions (cf. S 22).
b. ' 10) Then did leave us sticki, g in the myre.-A. Fleming, A Palroplie
of Epistles ((1576)) [OED].
(ll) So poor, that it is hardly able to keep the Pot boilileg for a Parsons
Dinner.-Heylin. Ecclesia Reslauraia ((1661)) [OED]. ,
From such use as in the last example keep the poi boilileg has come to mean
figura_tively "go on providing one's livelihood" or, further generalized, "keep
anything going briskly" (cf. OED, s.v.PoT sb.1 13e).23
c. (12) Be now the father and propose a son,
Hear your own dignity so much profaned,
See your most dreadful laws so loose]y slighted, '
Behold yourself so by a son disdained ;
And then imagit,e me iaki,cg your part
And in your power soft silencing your son.
Shakespeare, 2 Hen. IV v. ii. 92-97 ((1597)).
" ompare example (2) under S7 and also S8.
" ompare also the note of OED (s.v. Sl E v. Ie) : "In early examples the infinitlve is often
found when we should now use the complementary participle."
:8 OED also records a following example.
To employ them, as a hterary man is always tempted, to keep the domestic pot a-botling.
-LowelL My Study Windows ((1870)).
Here a-bonling shows that boiling is a gerund. But since this is a far later quotatlon than
example (11) above, which is the earliest one in this use given by OED, we might judge that
boiling in this expression is originany a participle and that the appearance of the gerundial
forin is rather a temporary phenomenon due to the analogy of "set a' thing going" or "send
a person packing" as described in S23.
60 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
The example has been quoted in a longer contexi, though the construction
in question is found only in the last two lines. This is because we want to show
clearly that iaking and silencileg are present participles. They might be interpreted as gerunds if only the sentence were to be considered separately (cf. S 55) .
We can see in this context that the two -ing forms are expressed as predicatives
of the object, as are the past participles profaned, slighted and disdai,,ed in the
three preceding lines. The successive constructions here are symmetrically paralleled with one another, so that the whole forms a concrete, cumulative style.
S 21. After the nmeteenth century onwards, the number of verbs used
with the "accusative and participle" construction has remarkably increased.
Below it ¥vould be sufficient to mention one example for each verb.
a. ( 1) He had walked about half an. hour when he sa , Cornelius comin
along the path Hardy Ltfe s Ltttle lrontes "A Tragedy of Two Ambi
tions" iv.
(2) While we were disputing about the ring. I heard a mournful voice
calling "An-tonia, An-tonia!'-Cather. My Anlonia I. iii.
(3) When, one day, from the top of Talfound Hill, he beheld the sea lyi,,g
open to his view,....-Conrad. Amy Foster.
(4) After all she had said of Mrs. Driffield it must seem strange to me
that I should fiud them sitting there together chattering away and laughing.29-Maugham, Cakes alrd Ale vii.
(5) One..,got nearer and nearer the sea, felt the cold and wet and discomfort: gro(e'i,eg on one, and....-Belloc. O,e Nothing, "On Railways and
Things.'"
(6) As she spoke, she observed him looking at her earnestly.-Austen,
Pride aud Prejudice.
(7) She just u,atched her only friend ealing it.-Galsworthy, Caravan,
"The Bright Side."
(8) Winterbourne perceived at some distance a little man standing with
folded arms nursing his cane.-H. James. Daisy Miller ii.
(9) One day, climbing on Great Gable, he noticed a girl
,avileg excitedly
from a dangerous-looking ledge.-Hilton. Good- yc. Mr. Chips iv.
(10) As he chuckled he leoted the numbness cleepileg into the exposed
fingers.30_London. To Build a Fire.
(11) Ashurst eyed her laying them (=the dresses) against her own modish
29 The participles chattering and laughi,4g In this example, though functioning as predicate
appositive in relation to the object them, are dependent on sitting, and so cannot be considered
to be in the same status a!s the latter. That is also the case with example (8) .
'o In the same context the sentence immediately follolving this contains a that-clause as
object of uoted, as follows :
Also, he noted thot the sti,eg ng which had first come to his toes when he sat down was
already passing away.
Though the ¥'erb note more usual]y introduces a subordinate clause and the construction is
requ]red especially when we intend to express some longer and more intricate content of fact
as in this quotation, yet we see that the expressron of the participle-construction in example
(lO) above can adequately form part of a s.imple, straightforward style. Cf. also S21
1957] THE Two CONSTRucrIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & "GENITIVE & GERUND 61
figure.-Galsworthy, The Apple-Tree vii.
( 12) I detected myself siarilcg more frequently at the open doorway and
blank window than I could find warrant for doing.-Bierce, Cale Such Things
Be?, "The Secret of Macarger's Gulch."
( 13) Though celebrated for the amount of work he got through, she
never caught him doileg any in this house of theirs.-Galsworthy, The Dark
Flower, "Spring" ii,
Many of the verbs in these examples are indeed used with the "accusative
and infinitive" construction as well, but it is noteworthy that some are incapable
of introducing the infinitive-construction. It would be difficult to find any instance where eye or deiect, as in example(11) or (12), is accompanied by its object
and an infinitive instead of a present participle. As to catch, as in the last example, Curme (Syntax p. 125) affirms that it is the participle, not the infinitive,
that is regularly used after it.
These verbs, from their semantic implication, usually require the objects
that refer to some concrete persons or things ; and if the writer wants to add some
further complementary expressions denoting manners or circumstances of actions,
they will naturally assume the nature of adjectival or even adverbial adjuncts.
Especially catch in the sense "come upon suddenly or unexpectedly" is also construed with "a person in or at some action" (OED s.v. CATCH v. 9). This informs
us that the use of a participle is more suited than that of
n infinitive in the con-
text where the complementary addition to the object is more in the adjunctive
nature.
S 22. In order to reveal the intrinsic nature of the participle-construction
more manifestly, we shall quote some instances where the participles aie added
to the obj ects with apparently looser combination.
(1) And suddenly he saze' her at her window, Iooki,cg out.-Galsworthy,
The Apple-Tree iv.
(2) And he heard a voice-Alicia s speaktng "The lovely lovely worldf
-Id, Caravan, "Spindleberries."
(3) Very early that morning two brothers..Jouaid a good way from Brenzett, an ordinary ship's hencoop, Iying high and dry on the shore, with eleven
drowned ducks inside.-Conrad, Amy Foster.
(4) Watchileg his friend, Iying there, with that smile, and the candlelight on his face, Ashurst shuddered.-Galsworthy. The Apple-Tree vir
When we compare example (2) above with example (2) under the previous
section, we can discern that common characteristic of the participles after the
noun "voice" ivhich is fundamentally adjunctive rather than predicative. It
would be instructive further to compare the following example.
(5) I was stm occupied with my idle fancies when I heard a taxi siop at
the door, the .bell ring, and in a moment Alroy Kear's bootning voice telling
the butler that he had an appointment with me.-Maugham, Cakes alrd Ale
xi.
62 THE AN:(ALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
Apart from the difference in the aspects denoted by the verbals, we must observe
that the combination between Kear's...voice and tellil4g is looser and less nexal
than that between a taxi and stop and the bell and rileg.
Again with the verb see, the participle performs an evidently characteristic
function of adding a concrete perceptive description to the object. But w'hen
the verb implies a more abstract or figurative sense and has to be accompanied
as its object by the expression of some visual or mental content comparable
to an abstract fact, the resultant construction is "see+a subordinate clause"31
The transition from the one construction to the other is sometimes delicate, and
moreover much depends upon contextual restraints and rhetorical technique.
Nevertheless we can see the distinct stylistic features in the respective constructions. The following passage quoted from the last part of the Tale of Tze!o Cities
describes what Sydney Carton is supposed to see in his mind's eye just before his
execution.
(6) I see ihe lives for w'hich I Iay down my life...in that England which
I shall see no more,...1 see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years'
time enrichi,eg them w'ith all he has, and passileg tranquilly to his reward.
I see thai I hold a sanctuary in their'hearts, and in the hearts of their descend-
ants hence.-Dickens, A Tale of Tu'o Cities 111. xv.
Here the three different constructions appear side by side with the same verb
see. First it is followed by a single substantive object, next by a participle-construction, and then by a that-clause. In the last construction the abstract implication of the verb is structurally symbolized to the highest degree, while the
two others are still suggestive of the concreteness in its literal sense.
S 23. b. Among the group of verbs which imply or involve a durative
state and which have been used with the construction during the last two centuries,
leave and keep should be first mentioned. Compare examples (lO) and (11) under
S 20.
(1) She gave me an uncertain look and, saying she would go and see,
left me stalrdileg in the passage.-Maugham, Cakes and Ale viii.
(2) They (=Railways) heap the small towns going.-Belloc, On Nothil4g,
"On Railways and Things."
Besides these, what specially attracts our attention is the use of have. Have,
construed with an object and a predicative, may mean "get (something) into a
specified condition" (OED s.v. HAVE v. 17a) ; but it is only recently32 that the
present participle has come to appear as predicative of the obj ect. The rise of
this new usage is apparently due to the analogy of the well-established construc-
tion "have+0bject+bare infinitive" as in "I will have him come." Below some
actual examples will be given.
tl
OED s.v. SEE v. 3, 4.
sa
OED does not record this use of have. It may be inferred from Poutsma (Gram. xx.
2 1 a)
that Jane Austen is the first to use have in this construction, as follows :
I am sure, from his manner, that you will have him callie g here soon.-Persuasion ((1818)).
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIVE & GERUND 63
(3) "You know we have an author lrmleg here " he said.-Maugham,
Cakes alid Ale viii.
(4) When the day comes, they make off by motor-car, and as likely as
not have a steam-yacht te!aitileg for them on the coast,-Milne, If I May,
"The Etiquette of Escape."
We can see that the intrinsic meaning of have in this use is neutral and
colourless, and so the complementary participle displays a good deal of predicative
force, often, as in the examples above, expressing the durative aspect. Herein
lies the stylistic value of the participle as contrasted with that of the infinitive,
though the constructions are parallel.33 It is but natural, ho¥vever, that have
is made to imply a causative or passive sense by the context, just as when it is
accompanied by an infinitive-construction.
(5) I won't have you su'earileg in front of the boy.-Greene, The Basement Room i.
(6) He'll hate havittg a lot of strangers bargileg in on him like this.-
Maugham, Cakes aud Ale iv.
At any rate the present participle is more descriptive and so seems to be
more favoured in modern colloquialism than the bare infinitive in the same use.
¥Vith respect to this use of have we must next consider the parallel use of
get .
(7) A pretty girl like Darlinb" Jill has got everylhing comileg her way, any-
how, and she knows it.-Caldwell, God's Little Acre ii.
(8) I ache all over, an' I got it comi, g.-Steinbeck, The Grapes of VVrath.
The usage seems to be popular in modern American colloquialism. Has got in
example (7) might be interpreted as colloquial variant of has, but we must observe
the difference of expressiveness between has got and has. Has got expresses an
active sense of securing something for oneself, ¥thile simple has suggests a somewhat
passive, neutral idea. In has got we can recognize the active force of the verb
get, vhich has invested the collocation "get+0bje.ct+-ing" with a more factitive
sense, as compared with "have+0bject+-ing." "Get it cowa,e" " as m example
(8) , is also the variant of the idiomatic expression "have it cowal g (to one) which
means "deserve something," as for instance in:
(9) You had it coming to you.-Paine, Comrades of the Rollimg Oceale
[D.A.].
Here also we can feel that have implies the neutral sense of experience,
while get is more expressive in itself and so fitter to lively colloquialism.
Next we shall mention some more examples with similar expressions
vhere
the main verbs are more active in their sense and are more liable to imply a causative
f orce.
(10) To alarm him would but seud him dashi, g to his camp with his fatal
** In the fouowing example the free position of the participle should be noticed; fcr such
inversion lvould be felt awkward in the case of the infinitive.
one day we went to tea at Mrs. Greencurt's, who had staying with her a cousin, the
wlfe of an Oxford don.....-Maugham. Cakes aud Ale viii.
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
64
[October
nel 's.-Bierce, ht 'ihe Midst of L fe, "A Horseman in the Sky."
( 1 1) But in the light, porous soil of my garden on the chalk hius Jigging
goes with a swing and a rhythm that set the thoughts silegilF g like the birds.
-Gardiner, "On a Distant View of a Pig."
(12) The private member. . .started the ball rolling by attacking the govern-
ment.-Daily Express (('1901)) [OED].
The -ileg forms used after these verbs seud, set and start may be interpreted
to be originally gerunds. In the expression "selrd a person packileg," which means
"dismiss him summarily," packiltg may have been corrupted from on packil g,
a packileg.84 Indeed, as to the idiomatic expression "set a thing going," OED
(s,v. Set v, 114 b, c, d) illustrates that goi,eg has come from ole (to, or obs. ile)
going, a going.35 The similar expression "start an engine rwaning" is analogous
fo "slari an engine to nm"; and from its ingressive naturc runni,4g had better be
explained as a gerund.
All these unprepositional -ing forms, however, express the durative aspect
of some resultant action or movement so descriptively that, from the PE point
of view, we can safely affirm they are now felt as participles. The reality is that
the simple -i,1g form has been favoured in PE more than the prepositional -ileg
form : "That set me thenkeng rs now much commoner than That set me lo thtlek
i,eg." In the diachronical process from the gerund to the participle here perceived,
there is represented a characteristic tendency in English syntax.
S 24, c. Most verbs of mentality ,have nelivly ,come to be used with the
"accusative and participle" construction from the nineteenth century onwards.
The question arises here whether the -ing forms may be gerunds, not participles
(cf. S 55). But from what has been observed, about example (12) under S 20,
we can infer that they are genetically participles. Moreover, in the following
examples, we should notice the rather loose combination of the -ing forms with
the preceding nouns or pronouns, to which they have added some descriptive
predication with their durative or imperfective aspect.
(1) Imagine yourself in the dock, on whatever charge it may be, and
imagine this and that friend comileg fonvard to speak for you.-Milne, If
I May, "Not CJuilty."
(2) But fanc_v Caroline travellileg across the continent of Europe with
a chit of a girl, who will be more of a charge than an assistance.-Hardy,
Alicia's Diary vii.
(3) He pictured the saturnine Gottlieb not at all enjoyileg the triumph
but, ¥vith locked door, abusing the papers for their exaggerative reports of his
sd ompare the third footnote (28) under S20. OED (s.v. PACK v.1 lOb), however, records
no instance where the prepositional gerund is used. The frst quotation with this construction is exemphfied from as early as the sixteenth century:
l would...send him pachi,,g.-Nashe, The Unfortwaate Traveller ((1594)).
ab ccording to OED, the use of the tyipe in goin*" is first exemplified from c. 1440, that
of the type a-going from 1530, and that of going from 1577, the quotation of which is :
The,..Gadarits set packing the stoutest of them.-M. Hanmer, The A wacient Ecclesiasti-
call Hisiories.
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATrvE & PARTICIPLE" & "GENITIVE & GERUND"
65
work.-S. Lewis. Arrozvsmith XXIV. i.
(4) I recollect my old governor calcing me in that little room.-Thackeray,
Peudeluais
[Jespersen] . '
(5) Willcox expedited the deed, and I remember him tellileg me he had a
great pleasure in making it ready.-Conrad, A my Fosler.
(6) I can ulrderstand the landlord decidiltg to throw in the walls and
the roof.-Milne, If I May, "Fixtures and Fittings."
(7) I don't quite like my children goileg away from home.-Hardy. Tess vi.
(8) I don't le'ant you bumping around in a wagon much.-Cather, Obscure
Destileies, "Neighbour Rosicky" i.
In example (1), we should notice the parallel constructions: "imagme+0bJect
+in ' the dock" and "imagine+0bject+comi,eg." Here comileg is apparently
placed in the same syntabtic position as the prepositional phrase i,t the dock, and
therefore should be interpreted as a participle that functions as predicatival
adjunct of the object. The same cumulative style of expression can be especially
remarkable in example (3) . The two participles elejoying and abusileg'introduce
the vivid supplementary description about the obj ect which is in itself concrete
enough The pattems "leke+0bJect+ il g" and " 'aut+0bject+-ing " as
in examples (7) and (8) are modern substitutes for the older "like or
'al t+0bject
+to mfinrtrve " The nelver expression is felt more descriptive and so seems
fitter to the vivid colloquiai style, as is the case with "have+bbject+-ill. _"" described in the previous section.3c It is the function of the participle, not the gerund,
that is corresponding to that of the infinitive in this kind of construction. It
would be instructive now to notice that as to the verb like OED (s. v. LIKE v.1
6c) records an example of a coneiete construction with a past participle dated
180537 earlier than examples with to-infinitives which are quoted from 1849 and
1887, apart from a much earlier example (1534) of an abstract construction with
a that-clause as object.
It must be admitted that there are some instances in ModE where some of
the verbs here exemplified also introduce the construction that is distinctly gerun-
dial. The phenomenon will be afresh observed in S 55.
8. "Preposition+0bject+participle" in ModE
S 25. The use of the construction governed by the preposition has been
remarkably expanded in the ModE period. First after wilh the construction
has grown more and more popular. Cf. SS 17, 18.
(1) I stood like a man at a mark, ,iih a whole army shooting at me.Shakespeare, Much Ado n. i. 254.
86 peaking particularly, 1; re perceive another difference. In most instances the participleconstruction follows the negative forms of the main verbs, while there is no such restriction
with the infinitive-construction.
s7 The quotation is:
Would he lihe the subject discussed in newspapers?-J. H. Newman. Letters aud Correspon-
d e,ece.
66
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
[October
(2) They are to be fish'd for thyre, te'iih your hook alwaies touchileg the
ground.-Walton, The Compleat Alegler [Jespersen] .
(3) It's a gloomy thing...to talk about one's own past, u'ith the day breaking.-Dickens, A Tale of Tu'o Cities II. v.
(4) A man all in a heap in the bows of the boat, slept with both arms embracileg the stem-head and his cheek laid on the gunwale.-Conrad, Youth.
(5) It was a soft grey outside, u'ith heavy clouds workileg across the sky,
and occasional squalls of snow.-Cather. My Antonia xii.
This expression with a noun or pronoun as its nucleus accompanied by a complementany participle is so well suited to the vivid, concrete style of PE that the
examples would be too numerous to be here mentioned. In example (4) a phrase
containing a present participle is co-ordinated with a parallel one containing a
past participle. Example (5) is especially noteworthy in that as object of the
preposition u'iih the combination of noun and participle "(heavy) clouds
'orkileg,,,. . runs parallel with a nominal expression followed by a prepositional
adjunct "(occasional) squalls of snow." Here we can see the nature of the participle as predicatival adjunct revealed externally.
S 26. Before inquiring into the instances introduced by other prepositions,
ve shall observe those where look at and listele lo introduce their objects followed
by participles. This is apparently a new construction developed on the analogy
of the older expression "see or hear+0bject+participle."
( 1) The general looked stolidly at a distant regiment sze'armileg slowly
up the hill through rough undergrowth.-Bierce, 1le the Midst of Lefe, "The
Affair at Coulter's Notch."
(2) It is.nice to...lislen to the school bell souudi,eg dinner, call-over, prep.,
and lights out.-Hilton, Good-Bye, Mr. Chips i.
In these examples the adjunctive nature of the participles seems more apparent,
for look at or listen to expresses more distinctly a physical action that requires some
concrete person or thing as its object, so that the attendant participle can be inter-
preted as more adjunctive or complementary than in the construction introduced
by see or hear. In the following example we can perceive still more clearly the
adjunctive nature of the participles that conduces to form a concrete, descriptive
style ,
(3) He got up painfully, Iooked at the flames, ai the sea sparkli,cg round
the ship, and black, as ink farther away; he looked at the stars shileing dim
through a thin veil of smoke in a sky black, black as Erebus.-Conrad,
youih.3B
38 The corresponding infinrtive-construction after look at or listen to is found mainly in
modern American English.
Look at that horse jump.-[Zandvoort].
I've got a religion of my own, and if it's good enough for me, Iistening to a Universalist
preacher preach would only make me dissatisfied with lvhat I've got.-Caldwell, Georgia
Boy, "The Day We Rang the .Bell."
This Is stylistically more compact but less descriptive than the participle-construction that
we have described here.
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIVE & GERUND 67
S 27. Similar modern phenomena are seen when the sight of, the soulrd of
and other synonymous expressions precede the combinations "object and participle." They participate in the formation of the same concrete and cumulative
style as verbs of perception, see, hear, etc., are liable to form with the corresponding construction.
( 1) He dreaded the sight of Mrs. Baines waiti,lg in the hall.-Greene, The
Baselnenl Room v.
(2) All I know is that at the end of three weeks I caught sight of Smith's
lunatic diggileg in Swaffer's kitchen gatden.-Conrad, Amy Fosler.
(3) We become optimists at sight of the frst crocus in the garden pceshileg
its ¥vay into the light.-Lynd, "It's a Fine World."
(4) He felt the glauce of the policeman ru'eleittg over him like a chilly
insect.-Galsworthy, Caravav,, "Virtue."
(5) Here she was, making him positively look fonvard to the glimpse
of her safety bicycle careerileg along the lakeside road.-Hilton, Good-Bye,
Mr. Chips iv.
(6) The spectacle of a bevy of girls dalecileg without male partners seemed
to amuse the third (i, e. of the brothers) .-Hardy, Tess ii.
(7) All of a sudden, I was startled by the souud of the full organ pealing
on the ear, accompanied by rustic voices and the willing quire df village-
maids and children.-Hazlitt, Table Talk, "Why Distant Objects Please."
(8) Soulrds are heard of a cell door beileg closed and locked, and approaching footsteps.-Galsworthy, Jusiice 111. ii.
(9) Then I sat up right into the night, thinking that dvery movement
of the ¥vind outside or of the drip of water was ihe little pad of his step comin*"
up the flagstones to the door.- Belloc. O,e Nothing, "On a Dog and a Man
Al so."
(10) As I entered the kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant slnell of gingerbread
baki,eg.-Cather. My Antoleia I. ii.
Examples (1) to (6) contain nouns of visual sense and examples (7) to (9)
nouns of auditory sense. In example (10) the noun denotes olfactory sense,
another kind of sensuous perception. In such contexts these nouns first require
the addition of the expression for some concrete persons or things to which they
refer, and then presuppose that it may be followed by some further complemen-
tary expression of action or state concerning the concrete objects. In the
process of expression, therefore, "sight or soetud+0f+0bject+-ing" may be
regarded as Just analogous to "see or hear+0b]ect+ ueg." It is true that the
participles in the examples above are adjuncts rather than predicatives in their
syntactic relation to the preceding nouns. But generally speaking, the predicatival
nature is inherent in the adjunct when expressed after the head-word. This intrinsic
' nature as predicatival adjunct should be equahy observed in the participle of, the
well-established pattern "I saw (or heard) him comiltg," described in SS 7,14,20.
In this respect it would be instructive to notice that there appears in example
(8) above an instance of a preposed participle "approachi,eg footsteps." Stylisti-
68
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
[October
cally approachile*" here has brought about a compact, though less dynamic, effect,
while "footsteps approaching" would become more suggestive of a progressive
sensuous impression, the participle turning looser and more predicatival.
S 28. We shall next enumerate some other examples that contain similar
expressions where a noun or an adj ective denotes some phase of mentality.
(1) And he always would come to an end, with many emphatic shakes
of his head, upon that awful sensatio't of his heart meltin.' within him directly
he set foot on board that ship.-Conrad, Amy Foster.
(2) In uttering ' those words, he was conscious, of a girl comi,tg down from
the common just above them.89-Galsworthy. The Apple-Tree i.
(3) He...died, the old dilettante, sixty years later with nothing to show
rather than preserve the memory of Mrs. Baines's malicious voice saying good
night, her soft determined footfalls on the stairs to the basement, goileg down,
goileg down.-Greene, The Basement Room ii.
The last is an instance of impressionistic style where the 1'riter goes on noting
down the impressions along with the stream of consciousness in the character
described. The present participles, especially the latter reiterated ones, are
effective as important constituents of such style, with. their durative or liquid
aspect. Again, the expression "the memory of...sayileg" should be compared
with the expression "remember.. ,sayil,g"' as in example (5) under S 24.
S 29. In PE there are other instances belonging to the type "noun+of
+noun+-ing," where the -i,eg form should also be interpreted as a participle.
Here the first noun does not express any kind of perception, but is the one which
makes .us anticipate the addition of some concrete description by means of the
following of-phrase. The complementary participle, with its descriptive force,
perfonns the function of making an expatiatory predication about the second
noun. To perceive the same stylistic characteristic as has hitherto been described,
we should only have to observe the actual quotations.
(1) I told my poor great master Haydon...that he ought to send in a
cartoole of King John dying of a surfeit of lampreys for the frescoes in the new
Houses of Parliament.-A. Huxiey, Rotulida, "The Tillotson Banquet" iii.
(2) But if you can actually take a snapshot of the squire kickileg the poacher,
you can prove the practical occurrence of a banker bashileg a beggar on the
head-then you explode the whole generous fiction on which the popularity
of a gentry reposes.-Chesterton, As I Was Sayileg, "About Political Creeds."
(3) . . .the domestic scene I beheld in the most Moslem part of Palestine,
the episode of a Moslem woman shouting and yelling abuse of her husband across
the breadth of a small lake, while the husband stood helpless and evidently
$9 The following example of the same type is noteworthy, because the participle is more
loosely connected with the preceding pronoun, so as better to manifest the concreteness of
the cumulative style. .
While Martin stood at his' bench he was conscious of her, humming at a table in the corner.
-S. Lewis, A rrowsmith XXI. iv.
1957]
THE TWO CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & ,,GENITIVE & GERUND"
69
unable to think of any repartee.-Ibid., "About Loving Gennans."
It must be noticed that in example (1) "a cartoon of King John dyileg" is not
exactly equivalent to "a cartoon of King John u'ho 'as dyileg." To Kiltg Johle the
attachment of dyileg is more direct or intuitive than that of the relative clause.
Dyileg, though expressed as an adjunct, is suggestive of some potential nature as
predicative. In example (3) "a Moslem woman shouteleg and yelli,eg . .,, is in a
parallel manner followed by the clausal construction "the husband stood... ,,.
S 30. When a word-group as obj ect of a preposition expresses some abstract
content of a fact or information, we are liable to have recourse to a gerund as
sense-predicate of the group (cf. SS46,47,54) . In reality, however, it is sometimes
difficult for the writer, in his linguistic sense, to decide whether he is going to express some idea as an abstract synthetic content or resort to a concrete, analylic
style of expression. Accordingly there are occasional manifestations of his psychological fluctuation as to the use of the -ileg form. In the modern Globe Edition,
we see :
(1) Clo "t Good madonna, why moumest thou ?
Olivia Good fool, for my brother's death.
Clo. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
Oli. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Clo. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's
soul beileg in heaven.
-Shakespeare, Twel. N. I. v. 72-77
In the last sentence above the obj ect of mourn for may be interpreted as the
whole synthetic group "your brother's soul beileg in heaven," of which being is a
gerund. But there is an interesting proof. In the Folio edition the same sentence
runs as follows : "The more foole (Madonna) to mourne for your brothers soule
bemg m heauen " with a comma before be ng Indeed, if we turn to the whole
context above quoted, we shall see that it would not only be suited to this
simple remark but also, in a better way, enlighten its meaning to understand
your brother's soul as the primary obj ect of mourn for, and being i,t heaven as a
supplementary adjunct that has a peculiar promin,ence of its own. According to
this interpretation being ilt heaven will mean "now that it is in heaven" or
"even if it is in heaven", and so invest this statement of Clown's with a new
sense of lively humour.
In this way the presence of a pause between the noun or pronoun and the
-ing form often makes it clear that the form has been used as a participle in
this kind of construction.
(2) Think, for example, of the woman she admired most, Lady Bexborough,
opeleile*" the bazaar.-Woolf, Mrs. Dallo 'ay.
(3) Every now and then he still heard of her, Iivileg down there, speudileg
her days out in the woods ar,d fields,. . .and steadily gro 'ing poorer and thinner
and more eccentric i becoming, in short, impossibly difficult, as' only English
women can.-Galsworthy, Caravan, "Spnndlebernes "
70 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
We shall later (in S 54) deal with the gerund-cdnstruction introduced by think
of or hear of; but in the examples abo ve it is out of question that each -ing form
is a participle. In the characteristically cumulative style re lealed in example
(2), the loose participle after the pause evidently plays an essential part. In
example (3) the feature of the style is more striking. The succession of the participial phrases has displayed a climactic descriptive force.
S 31. The expression "thi,ek of+0bject + participle," as exemplified by
(2) under the previous section, is a fairly common type of emotional, and chiefly
interrogative, sentence whose tone is decidedly colloquial. In meaning and use
it is approximately correspondent to the expression 'fancy or imagilee+0bj ect
+participle," which we have dealt with in S 24. For an example of the type,
let us now take "Think ofmy brother doi,eg it." In this sentence, ¥vhat the speaker
mtends to convey as ob]ect of "think of" is not the abstract fact that his brother
does it, but primarily the concrete agent "my brother," to which he goes on to
add a secondary expression of the agent's action by means of the participial
phrase "doing it." We shall cite two more instances.
(1) Thilth of me ever being rich!-Pycroft, Agoley Poilet ((1861)) [OED].
(2) ThiiFth of years to come, and children beil g born to us, and this past
matter gettileg known-for it must get known.-Hardy, Tess xxxvi.
In example ( 1) the use of the accusative me externally demonstrates that
beileg is a present participle. In example (2) we may perceive synthetic entireties
in "children being born to us" and "this past matter gett leg known." Yet it must
be observed that the two groups are preceded by "years to come " the more
immediate objec of think of. In these parallel groups we should be allowed
,, '' children" and
to interprete to come, beileg and getting as adjuncts to "years,
"this past matter" respectively. It is not that "children beilcg..." and "this past
matter gettilcg..." can be paraphrased into "children who will be... ' and "this
matter that will get. . . .' ' The original stylistic value, both concrete and descriptive, can only be well displayed by'the use of the simple participles.
The expression is not, however, confined to this type of emotional utterance.
We can add the examples of general statements.
(3) Suddenly even the upper part of the house became unbearable to him
as he thought of Mrs. Baines movileg round shrouding the sofas, Iaying out
the dust-sheets.-Greene, The Basement Room i. '
(4) I thought of her with her white body, her chin so milky, in the arms of
that old fat gross man and his thick loose lips kissing hers.-Maugham,
Cakes aud Ale xvii.
Example (4) is of special interest. It illustrates the adaptability of the
participle in the loose and cumulative style.
Associated with "think of+0bject+participle" should be considered "ihe
iho"ught of+0bject+participle." Here again we must observe the same characteristic of the style.
(5) Do not send any more of my books home. I have a great pleasure
1957] TH1
TWO CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & ,,GENITIVE & GERUND 71
in the ihought of you looking on them.-Keats, "The Complete Works" [Curme;
J espersen] .
(6) Once he slowed down to a walk, but the thought of the freezing extelid-
ing itself made him run again.-London. To Build a Fire.
As to example (5), it is indeed absurd to interpret "you' alone as oblect of
" the thought) of." But it wiLl help us to appreciate the descriptive force of this
expression if we regard looking as a participle. The participle is better suited than
the gerund for the vivid description in the poet's mind that his friend is looking
on the books, perhaps fondly taking them in his hands. In example (6), again,
what is meant by the writer as subject of "made him run again" is not surely the
thought of the abstract fact that the freezing extends itself, the sense which would
be expected if exiendileg here were to be understood as a gerund. As it is, the
description is more concrete, with "the feeling," as primary object of "(the thought)
of," considerably intensified and the participle extending supplemented as a predicatival adjunct.
S 32. In this chapter we have hitherto traced forward the general process
of how the "accusative and participle" construction has been developed since
the OE period. It is really surprising to see the tremendous expansion of the
construction in the ModE period, especially after the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The primary origin in OE was a limited range of usage where only some
verbs of perception introduced this construction (cf. S 7). As an OE instance of the
construction introduced by a preposition, we have observed a variety of "dative
absolute" construction, be him hfgelrdeim (cf. SS l0-11), which, however, has
not survived till the later period, Nevertheless, the stylistic feature of the idiom
was in common with that of the main construction that has been preserved and
expanded. Indeed the matter is often complicated by the confusion, both morphologic and syntactic, between the participle and the gerund; but it is the stylis-
tic feature-concrete, cumulative and descriptive-as well as the syntactic function that has enabled us to trace the obscure way of the participle-construction.
In the next chapter, we are going to proceed on the other parallel way of the
gerund-construction, which we hope will serve, if subsidiarily, to elucidate the
participle-construction in more detail.
CHAPTER 111
The Development of the "Genrtrve and
Gerund " Construction
l . The Morphological Origin of the Gerund
S 33. Before dealing with the construction in question, it will be proper
for us to survey the general process of how the -ing form as gerund has been de-
72
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
[October
veloped in the English language. In OE the endings -ung and, Iess usually, -ing
were suffixes chiefly used to derive abstract nouns from verbs. Both the endings
were mostly attached to weak verbs to form abstract nouns : e.g. bletsuaeg (=blessing), geeuduleg (=ending, end), nedileg (=reading) (respectively from the verbs
bletsi n, geeudian, ,nedan) . The derivatives from strong verbs were rare, but they
generally preferred the ending -ung.
At the end of the tenth century the formations in -ung w'ere prevalent, but
then set in the tendency of -u,eg being displaced by -ileg. The causes for this
transition may be considered in the three respects. (1) The first is phonological.
In the point of articulation the palatal consonant-combination -1eg is in more afflnity to the high front vowel -i--than to the rounded back vowel -u-, which in
its less stressed position was ready to be modified in the direction of -i- (cf. S 13).no
It is assumed, besides, that according to the vowel-shift that took place in the
late OE period, the dative plural ending -ulegum changed into -engum and -ingum.
The last influenced the other case-forms, till they all came to be levelled into -ing. 41
(2) The second cause is functional. In OE the suffixes -ing and -uleg were
used to form concrete nouns from both verbs and nouns, as well as to form abstract
nouns here considered. In such conrprehensive use -ua g come to appear less
adaptable than -ing. The nouns ending in -ileg ¥vere either feminine or masculine,
or sometimes neuter, while those ending in -uleg were almost invariably of the
feminine gender. In other words, -ileg was more,multivocal than -meg in its original
nature. This greater elasticity of -ing was in favour of the further advance of
the same ending, so that it became established as the common form of the gerund
as well.42
(3) Lastly the Scandinavian influence is to be taken into account. In Old
Norse the corresponding sufiix was almost unexceptionally *-ingo. Brought
into English at the end of the OE period, it furthered the generalization of the
form -ileg as a comprehensive suffix for both a substantival derivative and a verbal
one, abstract and concrete.43
S 34. For the causes above remarked, the use of -wag had gradually declined,
till. at the beginning. of the thirteenth century the old trace of the form was only
barely retained in those dialects which correspond to West Saxon in OE. For
example, in Ancrele Rize'le the ratio between -ing and -wag was already four to
one. There we find the indication of hesitation in the occasional indifferent use
of the two forms: bigileninge, bireousinge (=repenting), gederilege (=gathering),
lokinge, eeimilege (=taking), redinge, scheauze'inge (=showing) and lotinge (=peeping) were seen by the side.of the corresponding forms that end,in -ulege.44 Finally,
'o angenhove, The Origi,, of the Gerund S I .2.3. By the way, the same section of the work
describes the transition in more comprehensive details mainly from the phonological point
of view.
41
*2
runr_er, Die eugtische Sprache II. p. 320,
oss6, F. P. II. S 144.
:: Brunner, Op. cit. II. p. 320; Moss6, op .cit. II. S 144; Langenhove, op. cit, S 1.2,3(g).
Moss6, op, cit. II. S 145.
19:,71 THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" &_"GENITIVE & GERUND" 73
about 1250, -ing- entirely disappeared, with the universal establishment of -ilvg
as the ending of the verbal substantive or gerund.
It must here be remembered that the predominance of the gerundial form
-ing has a great significance, in _ view of the identical foun -ileg as the present
participle which had displaced -eud in the ME period (cf. SS 14, 15). The
morphological convergency of the two categories w s surely an advantageous
condition under which the gerundial syntax was; to attain a surprising development in the later eriod.
2. The Syntactic Development of the Gerund
S 35. As remarked in the previous section, the gerund45 or verbal substantive
was originally an abstract noun. It is true that it was derived from a verb and
so semantically had a verbal sense, but it primarily belonged to the syntactic
category of nouns, just as did OE words in -nes (=-ness), e.g. rihtwisnes (=righteousness) , gerecedeees (=narrative) , etc. 'The substantival nature of the gerund is
evident when we compare the corresponding form -un,g in German. There the
forms ending in -ung have remained unquestionably nouns : e.g. Belerung (=teaching) , Fithrwag (=1eading) , Lesung ( =reading) , Schaffwa;g (=creation) , respectively
derived from the verbs belehre;e, fuhren, Iesen, schaffen (=create) .
In OE, the verbal substantive in -uleg or -ing, as a genuine noun, was naturally accompanied by, some restrictive noun or pronoun in the genitive case, ,when
it was required ' to express the idea of subj ect or object for the sense of the verb
from which the substantive had been derived.
( 1) lisabeth gehyrde Mariale greii,,ge.-Luke i. 41 [Koch] . (Elisabeth
heard Mary's greeting.)
(2) Hit is fiscwylle and fugohvylle, and m re on huntunge heorta and ralua.
-Bede I. i. (It, i,e. Ireland, is rich in fish and fowl, and famous for hunting
harts and roes.)
Marime in example (1) is the genitive of Mar'ia (=Mary), and heorta and ralva
in example (2) are the genitive plurals of heort (=hart) and ra (=roe). In the
former the semantic relation of the genitive to the gerund is that of subject, while
in the latter the two genitives are in the relation of obj ects to the verbal sense
of hwatwage (=hunting) . In respect of the substantival construction, it is instructive to notice that as . the German translation of the passage cited as , example
(2) , Brunner (Die englishe Sprache II. p. 320) grves "Es Ist beruhmt durch
die Jagd (=the hunt ) auf Hirsche und Renntiere." In the German expression,
the original English gerund has been rendered into the genuine noun.
45 Our use of the term "gerund" should be strictly distinguished from what is commonly
adopted by philologists of early English, who take the "gerund" as identical with the inflected
infinitive that originally ended in -e,me, -aune. Indeed there are instances in-OE and ME
where -enne was confused with -e,rd(e), -ing(e), and still in ModE the -ing form sometimes performs the function of a datival infinitive (e.g. "He went hunting"). But we should like to regard
these as merely temporary or subsidiary phenomena.
74 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
S 36. In that early period the word-order was much freer than today.
¥Vhen a genitive noun was in the obj ective relation to a gerund, the former was
often placed before the latter so as to fonn a closely attributive construction.
(1) Swipost he for ider, to-eacan , s laudes sceawunge, for p m hors-
hw lum.-Alfred's Orosius [Moss6] . (Especially he went there, besides
seeing the land, to get the walrus.)
In the same period there was another way of expression, where the preposed
noun has no formal sign of the oblique case and is combined with the gerund so
as to form one compound. Here we may say that the closeness of the combination
as observed in example (1) has been heightened to the utmost extent.
(2) Si an ongann godspelboduleg.- Elfric, Homilies [A.-S. D.] . (Then
began gospel-preaching, i.e. the Christian dispensation.)
This is the most primitive way of expressing the complex idea. In the compound godspelbodwag, bodemg ( =preaching) reveals its static substantival character.
Though this kind of expression continued till late ME and its correspondent
is found in ModE,46 jts tradition must be regarded as distinct from that of the
gerundial syntax in general. We can say that the English gerund began to go
on its ¥vay of syntactic progress when it had left the stage of substantival
stability, proceeding towards that of verbal flexibility.
Let us now see the process by means of the representative types. The first
type is boc(-)reedileg (=book-reading), and the second raiding boc (=reading a
book). The former represents the synthetic stage where the element of obj ect
boc is expressed as the first component of the fixed compound, while the latter
represents the analyiic stage where the obj ect is freely expressed as a syntactically
independent unit after the goveming verbal r(eding. The transition from the
old synthetic stage to the new analylic stage is dated at the end of the twelfth
47
S 37. We are now in a position to inquire into the old stage of boc(-)nedil g
in more detail. The following is the qpotation from early ME.
(1) Man p r ne ge sp dde butan man; myrrilege and feoh spillilege.-The
Aleglo-Saxo,v Chro'eicle (E) 1096 ((1121-2)). (There was spread nothing but
the injury of men and the loss of money.)
Here it would seem that man and feoh in mau myrringe andfeoh spillinge were
merely the first components of the compounds, which happened to appear in
two separate words in consequence of the scribal habit. It is also conceivable,
however, that there had dawned the potentiality of the first elements, sooner
or later, being felt to be accusative objects, as syntactic units, of the second.48
de In ModE there is a somewhat free kind of compound-nouns belonging to the same type.
As to their origin, however, none can be traced back to the OE usage here remarked. In
the following instances the dates given after the respective words denote those of their earliest
uses according to OED: bell-ringing (c. 1315), child-bearing (1388), bear-ba ting (c. 1475), housekeeping (1550), haymaking (1588), fox-hunt ng (1674), glass-blowi,eg (c, 18 ,-9), etc.
a7
'8
oss6, F. P. II. S 172.
urme, "History of the English Gerund." Euglische Studie,e XLV.
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & "GENITIVE & GERUND 75
About the sam6 time we find another type boces neding, which is composed
of an obj ective genitive and a gerund. This has already been exemplified by
example (1) under S 35. The following is noticeable, for it is quoted from the
Anglo-Saxot, Chroleicle, just as example (1) above.
(2) Ne be heold hit nan ping seo scip fyrding buton folces ge swinc and
feos spillileg and heora feouda for bylding.-Ibid. 999. (The naval expedition
saw nothing but the people's toil, wasting money and emboldening their
enemy.)
It is true that scip fyrdileg should be interpreted as a close compound, where
scip (=ship) is rather attributively attached to fyrdi,eg (=expedition) , so that
the deflnite article seo agrees in the feminine case with the whole compound scipfyrding. But feos spilli, g and heora feouda for byldi, g are evidently free combinations that consist of the obj ective genitives and the verbal substantives.
Now that we compare this with example (1), we can see the remarkable parallelism of the two types: feoh spillilege and feos spilling. Of these the former
enj oyed a longer life, though finally, we might say, they both come to be supplanted by the newer one.
Now, at that transitional period the morphological distinction was generally
becoming obliterated, and at the end of the twelfth century the noun or nominal
group preceding the gerund appeared in the accusative case. The following may
be cited as one of the earliest examples of the type "acctisative object and gerund."
(3) Ich bide pe...bi his side openuaege, bi his blodi Rune
monie studen...erest in his one'holrd and se0
et ron inne
en in his 0 er, olast in his side
purlua,ge.-Lofsong of ure Lefdi ((c. 1200)) [Van der Gaafj Moss6]. (1 pray
you...by opening his side, by the issue of his blood that ran in many places
.in piercing flrst his one hamd and then his other, at last his side.)
Here the gerunds opemmge (=0pening) and J5urlunge (=piercing) have
displayed, to a certain extent, the syntactic force as verbs, though the prepositions bi (=by) and ile would be more naturally understood as governing the whole
following groups than as goveming the gerunds alone. Especially we should
observe the free use of his one houd (=hand), his 0 er (=0ther), and his side as
object of j e4r7ulege, as contrasted with the fixed nature of the component or
genitive object as seen in examples (1) and (2).
Though the last type, in turn, began to be superseded by the newer one of
reedi,eg boc about the same period,49 the general character of the construction was
still in the substantival stage. We see that in example (2) above the two "genitive
and gerund" ' phrases feos spillileg and heora feouda for bylding are co-ordinated
by the "genitive and noun" folces ge-sze'i,,c (=people's toil). Though the functional relation denoted by the genitive in the latter is subjective, as opposed to
ds The old type, however, kept remaining through the ME period. The following example,
illustrating a modern remnant as late as the sixteenth century, is noteworthy in containing
another synonymous construction with an of-phrase, which will be remarked in S 38.
Ther was brybes ( =bribes) walking, money mahynge, makynge of handes ( = hands) .Latimer, Seven Sermons before Edward VI ((1549)) [Moss6].
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
the objective relation in the former, ,yet the exact parallelism shows that the -ileg
forms were felt as syntactically genuine nouns. In example (3) , again, the "accusative and gerund" phrase (bi) his side openml;ge is followed almost appositionally
by the group with a noun as its head-word ; but the adjective blodi here is in the
subj ective relation to the verbal idea expressed by the noun reme, j ust as in his side
openmege the noun side is in the objective relation to the verbal idea of opelewage.
The gerund openunge remarkably correspon s to the noun rulce in the syntactic
status.
S 38. The substantival nature of the gerund in its early stage can be observed
in another construction. Besides that the old objective genitive was supplanted
by the accusative object in consequence of the inflectional decay, the function
of the genitive was sometimes handed down to a periphrastic expression w'ith the
preposition of･ This analytic way of expression also made its appearance at
the beginning of the thirteenth century and became considerably usual in ME,
but presently it was predominated by the more verbal construction with the simple
obj ect following the gerund. The following example is of particular interest,
since it manifests a transitional phenomenon where we have both an of-phrase
and an accusative pronoun as objects of the successive gerunds.
(1) Afterward, in geiin;ge of your richesses and in usil ge hem (=them),
ye shul (=shall) alwey have three thinges in your herte (=heart).-Chaucer,
C. T., "The Tale of Melibeus" S 52.
It was_ in the fourteenth century that the verbal force of the gerund was
conspicuously developed. This was illustrated by the new use of adverbs as modifiers
of gerunds, as well as the use of obj ects after them. We shall here cite from _ Ioss6
(F. P. II. S 174) the interesting remark .that Dan Michel of Northgate, whose
A 5enbite of 1le 'yt was completed in 1340, was just in the transitional stage in
the use of adverbs with gerunds50 and that we find there aie uerste guoi,,ge in (=
at first going in ) and uallyng doule (=falling down) by the side of ingeeoynge (=
il going) , and at his dotm collemyleg (at his down coming) as well as his first commyleg
doeele. As to his remarkably irequent use of gerunds, we may assume that it
was in many cases due to the use of the g ro,rdifs in -alet51 that had appeared in
the Old French originals, Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Dan Michel
made a considerable contribution to the syntactic development of the English
gerund.
Allother contributor in the fourteenth century is Wyclif. In.his version of
the Bible published in 1382, according to OED (s. v. -INGI 2), he regularly
uses the gerund with verbal force in translating the Latin gerulidium, while
' The use of an adverb with a gerund, however, did not start at that time in the fourteenth
century, as is often alleged, but much earlier-indeed, in the twelfth century (cf. Moss6, op.
cit. S 174).
'* The Old French form in -aut, in turn, was due to the convergency of the Vulgar. Latin
present participle in -antem and "gerundium" in -audo. In Vulgar Latin the ablative "gerundium" in -ando performed the same function as the present participle. This functional coniusion was kept on in Old French, and, what is worse, facilitated by the morphological identity.
The source of the modern indistinctness is very far to seek.
1957] THE TWO CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & ,'GENITIVE & GERUND" 77
he retains the original substantival construction where an abstract noun has
been used in the Latin text. Thus we find "the thridde moneth of the goyng
of Yrael out (egressianis) of the loond of Egipte" (Exod. xix. 1) (the third month
w'hen Israel went out of the land of Egypt) ; but "power of heelylege (curaudi) sicknessis, and of castylege out (ejicielrdi) fendis" (Mark ili. 15) (power of healing sick-
nesses, and of casting out fiends) . In the former goyng, together with oeit, c.orresponds to the Latin noun egressioleis, genitive of egressio. It is therefore used
like a noun, preceded by the definite article and followed by the of-phrase that
is in the relation of subject to its verbal sense. In the latter, on the other hand,
(of) heelyltge and (of) castynge oud, which correspond to the Latin genitive gerundiums curaltdi and ejicie,rdi, immediately precede their obj ects just as genuine
verbs do.
From these instances we may judge that the Latin influence, as well as the
Old French, was a factor in helping the Eng"lish gerund to be developed in verbal
constructions. The new gerundial construction was also favoured by some other
writers such as Maundeville and Chaucer. It is upon the current of this development in the fourteenth century that we see the "subject and gerund" construction
starting to make a steady advance.
3, lo-janes ;50 sumee risiudde
S 39. As has been observed above, the transposition of the object after the
gerund represents a marked step in the verbalization of the gerund whose nature
is originally substantival. The gerund has now developed as much verbal capability as an ordinary transitive verb in freely preceding its object according to
the common word-order in English syntax. At the same time it may b9 concluded
that the older order "(pro)noun+gerund" has become reserved for another important purpose, that is, ta express the relation of the subject to the gerund.
Morphologically, too, a correspondent phenomenon has taken place. As the means
of expressing the obj ective relation to the gerund the genitive case began to be
supplanted by the accusative at the end of the twelfth century. In the same
way, the old genitive that had denoted the relation of subject to the verbal idea
of the gerund came to be replaced by the new accusative about two centuries
later. This has undoubtedly enhanced the flexibility of the gerundial expression,
marking a further step in its development.
Now we must remark a special phenomenon that had appeared much earlier
than the general transiuon to the new "sub] ect and gerund" construction. The
following might be recognized as the earliest example where the gerund is preceded
by a subjective common case, instead of a genitive case.
(1) Si sterre...apierede te po prie kinges of hepenesse to-janes ;50 sumee
risilrdde.-Kentish Sermons ((a. 1250)) [Morris & Skeat]. (The star...
appeared to the three kings of heathendom towards the sun rising.)
In interpreting the phrase tojalees o sunne risiudde in this quotation written
in the Kentish dialect in the thirteenth century, there are two points to be con-
78
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI 'ACADE:,*IY
[October
sidered. ･ The first is the question whether risilrdde may not be a present participle,
instead of a gerund. It is true that the form ending in -ilide is that of a present
participle as distinguished from a gerumd which ends in -ilege, and that in Kentish
the distinction between the t¥vo categories was well preserved in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. But the morphological confusion of the two forms w'as a
fairly common phenomenon in those times. The participial form was sometimes
meant for a gerund, and vice versa. From this fact it can be judged that risilidde
in the example above is used as a gerund in spite of its form.52
Secondly there is a question of how to interpret this compact expression
to-janes jbo sumee risi,rdde. We can see that the context allows it to be interpreted in the two different ways. (1) If the preposition toja,ees, whose original
sense is "against," is here understood to imply a temporal relation, meaning
"against the time of, near," the whole phrase will come to mean "near or at the
time when the sun rose, i, e. near or at sunrise." (2) If, on the other hand, we
take tojanes here as denoting the relation of local direction with the sense of "towards", then the whole phrase will be interpreted as meaning "tovvards the point
where the sun rises, i.e. towards the east." The second interpretation has been
adopted by, among others, Morris53 and Einenkel,54 but we should like to resort
to the first one ¥vith OED and others, on the grounds that will be described in
the following section.
S
0. If we admit that tojanes
o suaelee risiledde implies the idea of direction
and means "towards the east," risilidde may ' s well be regarded as a present
participle which is adjunctively subj oined to o sumee. Then the whole expression will appear to form a concrete style, very characteristic of the early syntax.
Even so, the combination has too much connotation for us to j ustify this construing.
The fact istthat risilidde is a gerund as has been verified in the previous section,
and moreover there is an important piece of corroboration. The Ke,ttish Sermons
are English translations from the French originals. According to OED (s.v. SuNRISlNG), the French corresponding to the part "to-janes po sunne risindde" is
"vers le solail (=soleil) Ievant." It is inferred, therefore, that the French g6ron-
dif levant was the prototype of the English risilrdde. Though the French gbrondif itself had already been indistinguishable from the present participle from
the morphological point of view, we should now be reminded that modern French
has fairly established idioms of a similar construction, au soleil levaut and me
soleil couchalet. These correspond in English to "at sunnse" and "at sunset" respectively; and it would be difficult for us to perceive in these French phrases
the dynamic expressiveness that can be displayed by the absolute participial
phrase. In the same way, vers le solail levant and its translation tojanes J50 sumee
risilidde are such fixedly constructed expressions that we may even feel solail
levalet and sul lee risiudde as compounds. We may say that the elements here
52 Moss , F. P. II. S 154: 13cgholm, English Speech from an Historical Point of View p. 217.
5s
pecimens oj Early English I. p. 332.
54 Historische Syniax, Nachtrage (S 3 n).
195-/] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & "GENITIVE & GERUND" 79
are so closely combined to each other that the groups have come to imply the fused
meaning of a temporal noun "sunrise" (G "Sonnenaufgang").
It seems to be significant from the standpoint of syntactic history that the
earliest type of the "subject and gerund" construction, even if it was the imita-
tion of the Old French expression, was in the nature of a compound. The stage
of compounds represents that of close and static structure, which later proceeds
to the stage of open and dynamic structure. In SS 36, 37 w'e have described
how the primitive type of compound boc(-)nedi,eg has grown into the free syntactic
type nedil g boc in respect of the development of the "gerund and obj ect" construction. Now, as to the "subject and gerund" construction, we see a parallel
tendency. The compound-like (the) sun risi,eg represents the primitive type of
the construction. It makes us anticipate the later development of freer and more
general types, where any kind of noun or pronoun can be used before a gerund
as sense-subject of the latter. '
S41 The type "the sun nsing " "the sun going down," or suchlike, especially preceded by a preposition, began to be found more than half a century later
than the instance in the Kentish Sermoles dealt with in the previous sections. The
type of expression was pretty common in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
In every instance it had the function of temporal determination, and there should
be observed the static substantival nature which is alien to the participleconstruction. The following are some of the examples.55
(1) Mury hit is ile somee risileg.-Ki,eg Alisaulider ((c. 1300)). (It is
merry about sunrise.)
(2) At morn yn the sonne rysynge Brutus led Pandras...Until his castel.
-Robert of Brunne. Chronicle ((1338)). (At sunrise in the morning Brutus
led Pandras...to his castle.)
(3) And at sal last fra Jbe sole rysyleg Till pe tyme of j e son douaegang-
yng.-Rolle of Hampole, The Pricke of Conscie,cce ((c. 1340)). (And that
shall last from sunrise till sunset.)
(4) He wolde rest in it after the sunlee goyng dowle.- Wyclif, Gen. xxvii.
ll ((c. 1382)). (He would rest in it after sunset.) .
It is now interesting to see that this type of "common case and gerund "
was liable to be superseded by the more usual one that contains a genitive noun
or its equivalent of-phrase. Example (1), for instance, appears in the other text
(Laud MS ) as "Mury hit rs m son,1;es nsynge By the side of fra pesott rysyng,"
as in example (3), Richard Rolle uses in another place (The Psalier ((a. 1340))),
"fra the rysynge of,lhe sule." Agam "after the sul ne goyng down" in the biblical
passage quoted in example (4) has been altered in Purvey's revision ((a. 1388))
into "aftir the goyng dolvn of the sulelee." This may indicate that the type "(the)
sun rising" ¥vas not altogether felt as a close compound but was likely to be
55 The examples mentioned in this section have been quoted chiefly from Van der Gaaf.
"The Gerund Preceded by the Common Case"' SS27-29; Kellner. Htsiorical Outlines of English
Synta;r S 148; and Brunner. Die e'eglische Sprache II. p. 324.
80
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADE).IY
[October
understood as a free combination as if "the sun" were equivalent to the subjective
genitive "the sun's" or the genitive-phrase "of the sun". But the fact is that the
type has failed to be established as a permanent one56 ; it is rather a special or
limited expression which implies the abstract idea in its concrete outer form.
;5e sumee rysynge does not mean"that the sun rises (rose) or is (was) rising" but
the time when the sun nses (rose)." Such a condensed and connotative expression was too special to be felt as, a typical construction of "subject and gerund."
There is good reason for OED (s. v. SUN I . 13) to have recorded this kind of "special
compounds," sule-arising, su,eTgoileg-do ,lc and suae-sitiileg, all marked obsolele and
first exemplified from c. 1440. The dictionary also treats suaerisileg and sun-
seiiing under independent headings, and marking them both as "now rare or
archaic," notes that they have been superseded by sunrise and suleset respectively.
As to their origin, it explains that they have been formed "partly after F soleil
levant" and "F soleil couchani." In conclusion, we may say that the type "sun
rising " appeared chiefly from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century on the analogy
of F soleil levalet, that it assumed the nature of a fixed compound where the first
component swa was juxtaposed with the gerund rising, as it were, in the caseless
status, and that it was destined to be displaced by the new noun sunrise. In
view of the general trend of the gerund-construction, it was surely a transitory
phenomenon ; and yet it is significant in representing the earliest stage in the develop-
ment of the "genitive and gerund" construction.
' 4. "Subjective Genitive+Gerund" in ME
S 42. In the ME period, apart from,the special phenomenon "sun(-)rising,"
the usual vay of expressing the subj ect of the gerund, or more strictly, what would
be the subject of the corresponding verb, was to place the genitive case of a noun
or pronoun before the gerund. This is nothing but a traditional way kept on
since the OE period,57 but it was only in the course of ME that the freedom and
flexibility of the verbal construction was being gradually developed, Belo v
some examples will be quoted from the works in ME.
( 1) Samt;t Johaness fullhinimeg wass Halsumm and god to fanngenn.-The
Ormu,lum ((c. 1200)) [OED]. (Saint John's baptizing was wholesome and
and 'good to receive.)
(2) Of pe kynges crounynge in four and tuenty e gere.... -Robert of
Gloucester, Chronicle ((c. 1298)) [Koch]. (Of the king's crowning in the
t venty-fourth year... .)
(3) Her pardoun is ful petit at her partyng hennes.-Langland, Piers
Plowman; (B) vii. 57 ((c.1377)). (Her pardon is very small at her parting
56 In the following ME instance, kochis cro 'ynge is of a similar type, composed of the genitive and the gerund. It also connotes a temporal idea, though it seems a still more isolated
phenomenon than e swane rysynge (cf. OED, s.v. COCK-CROWING).
Whanne the lord of the hous cometh...in the mydny3t, or kockis crou mge.... -Wvclif,
Marh xiii. 35. (When the lord of the house comes...at midnight, or cockc.rowing....J
5T For an OE instance, see example (1) under S35.
1907] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIVE & GERUND '
l
hence, i. e. death.)
(4) Who coude telle yow...Swich subtil loking and dissimulinges For
drede of jalouse melenes aperceyvileges ?-Chaucer, C. T "The Squreres
Tale" 283-6 ((c. 1386)). (Who could tell you... such subtle looking and
dissimulations for fear of jealous men's perceivings?)
(5) Thus Achillis achevit his awne choyse frendes, Thurgh his prokuryng
prestly all the pure Troiens .-The Gest Hystoriale of the Destructiole of Troy
((c. 1400)) [Koziol]. (Thus Achilles gained his own choice friends through
readily instigating all the simple Troj ans.)
(6) At his againe comyng he semed blewe.-Malory. Morte D'Arthure
((1470-85)) [Visser]. (At his coming again he looked blue.)
These examples, except the last two, show that the gerunds still remain
in the status of nouns and their combinations with the preceding genitives are
structurally substantival rather than verbal, though in example (3) the gerund
is accompanied by the adverb hemces (=hence) . Especially in example (4) the
-ing form appears in the plural aperceyvileges (=perceivings), which is placed so
as to form an antith sis with dissimulileges (=dissimulatings) in the preceding
line, The substantival nature of the -ing forms is apparent both morphologically
and semantically. In example (5) , on the other hand, the prepositional phrase
introduced by thurgh (=though) reveals fairly verbal features, though the genitive
pronoun his ¥vould be superflous here if the passage were to be expressed in PE.
Example (6) has much of the modem pithy gerundial expression. It should
be observed that the gerund coming is immediately determined by the adverb
agai,ee (=again) .
At any rate the supple and forceful gerund-construction that is commonly
found today had not been fully developed till the beginning of the ModE period,
w'hile the original substantival nature had been, more or less, preserved all the
time.
S 43. In ME a genitve personal pronoun was in more general use than a
genitive noun as sense-subject of a gerund. Such a pronoun is expressed rather
subsidiarily with a gerund which conveys the primary idea in the context. In
this respect this kind of construction may be contrasted with the participleconstruction, where an accusative noun or pronoun is primarily expressed and
a participle is added only complementally.
The prominent type with the genitive pronoun preceding the gerund is "ilt+
my (thy, his, etc.)+gerund." It flrst appeared about the end of the thirteenth
century, probably through the imitation of the Old French "en+mon (to,t, son,
etc.) + g6rondif . "58
(1) Guo in-to helle ilee 15ine bibberde
et pou ne guo ilee jsilee sierui, ge.
-Dan Michel, A5enbite of 1lewyt ((1340)) [Moss6]. (GO into hell while you
are alive that you may not go vhen you die.)
68
inenkel, Historische Synta;v S 3. C-
82 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
(2) Me thought a nyght i,c my slepileg, that... .-Chaucer, The Romawat
of the Rose ((a. 1366)) [Einenkel]. (It seemed to me one night while sleeping that... .)
The original French for example ( 1) is "Va en enfer en ton; vivaut, que tu n'i
voises en iolc morant." For the morphological confusion seen in libbeude and steruinge,
SS 12, 13, 39 should be referred to. The French that corresponds to example (2)
is "Ce m'iert avis ele mo,c dormdt t... ." Since the type "in my sleeping" began to
be found in English about the same time as the type "in sleeping"59, whose prototype was, in turn, the Old French "en dormant," we can safely conjecture that
both the types ivere felt parallel so that, in the writer's linguistic consciousness,
the genitive pronoun in the former was merely secondary in the process of expression.
This type of expression also failed to be naturalized into the general usage
of English syntax, for it hardly survived till after the ME period60. After all
it only serves to indicate that the Romanic influence should be subsidiarily taken
into account in the present survey.
5. "Common or Accusative Case+Gerund" in ME
S 44. When the sense-subject of the gerund was a noun, its form as genitive
case was often obscured so that the noun came to appear in the form suitably
called "common case." This phenomenon first became apparent about the end
of the thirteenth century in works written in the Northern dialect, so far as this
construction is concerned. It usually occurred after a preposition.
(1) At pe appostell bidileg sone Pai went. -The North-English Legelidary
((1275)) [Van der Gaafj Poutsma]. (At the apostles' bidding they soon
went . )
(2) Bot son quen he had seised Pe land, Pat in Pan fel a hunger strang
Thoru cone ze'antilcg or thoru were.. . .-Cursor Muudi ((c. 1300)) [Van der
Gaafj Curme]. (But soon when he had seized the land upon which a great
famine had fallen through com wanting or through war... .)
(3) For the quene comynge he was fol glad.-Robert of Brunne, Chronicle
((1338)) [Van der Gaa ･ (For the queen's coming he was very glad.)
(4) And what es mare uncertayn thyng, Pan es Pe tyme of the dede commyl g,-Rolle of Hampole, The Pricke of Conscience ((c. 1340)) [Van der
Gaaf; Moss6] (And what is a more uncertain thing than is the time of death
coming?)
(5) And Pat was showet apertly by iemples aud images fallileg down in
Rome.-The Stalezaic L fe of Christ ((a. 1400)) [Van der GaarJ. (And that
was shown partly by temples and images falling down in Rome.)
59 Einenkel, op. cit. S 3.E: Matsner, Englisch Grammatih 111. p. 85 f.
fo As one ModE instance Einenkel (Ibid.) mentions the following, which evidently reflects
the author's syntactlc Latinism.
He rose, and u his rising seemed A pillar of state.-Milton, Paradise Lost.
}
1907] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIVE & GERUND ' 83
(6) Sone uppole the chef barolt comyng I schall send you a lettre.-The
Pasto,e Letters ((1461)) [Van der Gaa . (Soon upon the chief baron corning
I shall send you a letter.)
First it should be observed that the -iltg forms in these example are gerunds,
not present participles. Apart from the morphological consideration of the preceding nouns, it was usual in the Northem or East Midland dialects, as illustrated
by these examples, that the -i,cg fonns as gerunds were fairly distinguished from
the -aud(e) forms as participles (cf. S 12). In example (1) appostell is an uninflected form for the genitive plural, as is often the case with Northern Middle
English. Corn, in example (2), is another uninflected genitive ; it would have
been corlees in older or Southern English.
In example (3) it would be possible to regard quene as accusative and
comylege as a participle.61 Indeed in this East-Midland work the forms -aude and
'1ege were sometimes used indiscriminately as present participles62. But the
meaning of the quene comynge here seems to express the idea of an action or
occurrence rather than a concrete description of the person. Morphologically,
besides, the genitive singular of the feminine noun quene ( < OE cze'e,ce) originally
had the same form as the nominative singular, and the old usage was still occasion-
ally found as elsewhere in ME. For these reasons we judge comynge as a gerund
preceded by the outwardly common case quene.
Hampole shows a good deal of hesitation in using dede (=death) as in example (4), for in similar contexts in the same work he uses "pe dedes commyng"
and " e commyng of pe dede. Such hesitation, probably due to the fact ,that the
sense of the noun is abstract and inanimate, is the proof that dede in the quotation
is meant for the genitive.
Example (4) has been quoted so that we may illustrate that the plural noun
as sense-subject naturally fails to be formally distinct whether it is genitive or
accusative (cf, S 49 c) . The commom cases temples and images here are of course
meant for the genitives. By the way, Iet us note that this example presents a
good deal of verbal character that is seen in instances of the same construction
in the later periods.
The last example includes as sense-subject of the gerund the use of the common case ihe chef (=chief) barole, where it is not so easy to explain the disappearance of the genitive ending, for the text Pastol Letters was written in Norfolk,
East Midland, and baron, which denotes a person, would have been readily inflected as barones. ' ere the temporal phrase "uppole the chef baron comyng."
though such is a quite common kind of expression in ModE, may probably be
interpreted as an explicit expression for the absolute participial phrase "the
chef baron comyng", the preposition uppolt having been added to express more
clearly the relation of temporal detennination implied by the absolute construction. We may assume, therefore, that such an expression, apparently in imitation of the Latin usage, was first limited to literary style in that early period.
urme, Syntax p. 489.
" ioss6, F. P. n. S 134.
'*
84 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
Later on, especially after the end of the seventeenth century, it became popular-
ized and came imto colloquial use as well. With this transition we may
conclude that a parallel change took place in the nature of the construction.
The original participial construction gradually came to be felt as gerundial.
Here ¥ve can see an aspect whefe the participle-construction has contributed to
the modern extention of the gerund-construction.
S 45. The failure in the case-distinction was also observable when the personal
pronoun her was used as sense-subject of the gerund.
(1) I am ful gladde of here comylege.-The Soze'don;e of Babylone ((c. 1400))
LVan der Gaa ･ (1 am very glad of her coming.)
(2) Of here J5edyrgoyleg Pis was the entent.-Bokenam, Legends ((1446))
[Van der Gaa ･ (This was the intention of her going there.)
That here ( =her) in either of these examples is genitive, not accusative, is
clear from the strikingly substantival nature of the collocation. For the construction in example (1), example (3) under the previous section should'be compared.
In example (2) J5edyrgoyleg, which literally means "thither-going," remained in
the early stage of the compound-construction, where the adverb is ptefixed to
the gerund so that the components may form one noun (cf. S 38) .
6. "Preposition+Genitive+Gerund'" in ModE
S 46. In the greatest number of the ME examples quoted in the preceding
sections 39-45, the "subject and gerund" construction is introduced by some
preposition. This is only natural, because the gerundial construction can most
effectively display its syntactic utility with the stylistic value of supple compact-
ness, when it is freely used as object of a preposition. In this way the idea of
various relations can be explicitly denoted by the prepositions ; while if we
were to use a subordinate clause instead, it would be awkward or, from the
ModE point of view, impossible to express any preposition at all. For instance,
the German "dadurch dass er komt" cannot be translated into "through that
he comes" in ModE, but instead, briefly and yet expressively, into "through his
cowan .
of the construction has been greatly enhanced since the perfect and passive forms
of the gerund (e.g. by his havileg come, for my being take't, etc.) were developed
'
about the end of the sixteenth century.
In the ModE period, the more the verbal force of the gerund came to be devel-
oped, the more popular the construction became in use. Of the innumerable
examples in ModE that illustrate the "preposition+genitive+gerund" construction, we shall first quote those with personal pronouns as gerundial subj ects.
Also compare SS 55, 56, 57.
(1) A t their risinge in the dawnyng of the day, thei sent about priuily
to their servantes.-T. More, The History of Kyng Richard the Third [Visser] .
(2) (She) Had made provision for her following me And soon and safe
1957]
THE TWO C02 STRUCTIONS: " ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & ,,GENITIVE & GERUND
85
arfived where I was.-Shakespeare, Com. Err. I, i. 48 49.
(3) Whether this might not partly arise from my openileg my Mouth much
seldomer than other People...1 am not at ' Ieisure to determine.-Steele,
The Spectator No. 17.
(4) She made not the smallest objection io his joileileg in the society of
the neighbourhood, nor to his leavileg his parish occasionally ' for a week or
two to visit his relations.-Austen, Pride alrd Prejudice xiv.
(5) Mrs. Driffield is very keen ole my doileg it.-Maugham, Cakes alrd
Ale xi.
It is no doubt that her in example (2) should be understood as genitive. Though
the general tendency is that this sort of gerund-construction; as well as those
dealt with in the following sections 47-50, became conspicuously more verbal
from the eighteenth century onwards, it would not be irrelevant here to mention
such a PE instance as follows, where the -ileg form remains quite substantival
though it appears in the same syntactic position.
(6) And he need not have been so much afraid about his dancileg. Truly,
it 'was not polished, but it could not spoil hers, so light, firm, buoyant!-
Galsworthy, The Dark Flower, "Spring" vlii.
Dancilcg 'here does not denote any person's dynamic act performed on a partic-
ular occasion, but a purely static and abstract idea meaning "mode or manner
of dancing."63 It thus remains in the old stage as a verbal substantive. This
is, indeed, the intrinsic feature, more or less, perceivable in any gerund that
characterizes its use as distinct from that of the participle.
S 47. The' use of a genitive noun as sense-subj ect of the gerund has also
been fairly common, though not so frequent as that of a genitive personal pronoun. The first of the following examples shows a phenomenon where the genitive noun stands parallel with the genitive pronoun.
(1) They are all couched..,with obscured lights; which, at the very
instant of Falst tf's and our meetileg, they will at once display to the night.
-Shakespeare. Merry W. v. iii. 14ff.
(2) There is a very different story from that of the earth's movileg round
the axis.-Sterne, Trisiram Shaudy EKoch].
(3) I hear nothing of Lord Mouletjoy's coming for lreland.-Swift, The
Journal to Stella [Jespersen] .
(4) Winterbourne felt a superior ' indignation at his'own lovely fellowcountry woman's not kl,owileg the difference between a' spuriouS gentleman
and a real one.-H. James, Daisy Miller ii.
(5) Is , it not more reasonable to suppose that the vvhole thing may have
been due to a young geletlemale's celebratileg his twenty-first birthday near
Oxford...?-Lynd, "The Earthquake "
It is observable that the "genitive and gerund" construction is rarer when
es poutsma, Gram. Lvl S37 h).
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACAI)ENlY
the sense-subject is a noun than when it is a personal pronoun. But when the
gerundial subject is in the conunon or accusative case, the general proportion
of the usage is reversed. The latter construction is more usual with a noun than
with a personal pronoun, for the reasons that will be remarked in S 49. It would
be of some interest here to notice that the use of the genitive noun is commoner
in the eighteenth (or early nineteenth) century. For example, in (2) above,
earth's would sound awkward and probably be replaced by earth in PE, since
in modern prose style it is unusual to use the genitive fonn for a noun that denotes
an impersonal thing.
Opposite to this general tendency, however, there is another which should
be taken into account. Even in late ModE the genitive noun (as well as the
genitive pronoun) is liable to be used when the semantic or syntactic nature
of the gerund that follows it is decidedly substantival rather than verbal. We
should like to add an example which illustrates such tendency.
(6) During the interval of the cottager's going and coming, she had said
to her husband... .-Hardy, Tess xxxv.
Here the use of the genitive cottager's is quite appropriate, since going aud
comileg is almost synonymous with "departure and arrival or return." This is
also an important point we should consider in contrasting the gerund-construction
with the participle-construction.
The following PE example should now be observed, for it has revealed the
substantival nature of the gerund more explicitly, though the sense-subject is
expressed in a different outer form.
(7) He...resolved to curse them all in the moming and go off with Leora,
but with the coming of ihe ihree-o'clock depression he perceived that with him
she would probably starve....-S. Lewis. Arrou'smith IX. iii.
Such expression of the gerundial subject by a periphrastic phrase should be
compared with the parallel expression of the gerundial object that is found in
the older stage of the development (cf. S 38) .
7 "Preposiuon+Common or Accusative Case+Gerund" in ModE
" o a
S 48. It may be considered that such a modern construction as ...
young gentleman's celebrating his twenty-first birthday..." (in example (5) under
the previous section) reveals the double nature -the substantival nature on one
hand and the verbal nature on the other. First it is substantival in that the gerund
celebrating is defined by the genitive gentleman's and, together with the latter,
governed by the preposition to. Secondly it is also verbal in that celebrating
precedes its obj ect birthday. The use of the genitive is, therefore, an old characteristic that has tenaciously remained in the verbal construction, which should
be the ultimate goal of' the development. ･According to the general trend, therefore,'the gerundial subj ect is to be changed from the genitive case, the old sub-
stantival remnant, to the common c se, which appears as the gr mmatical subject preceding the predicate verb, just as the genitive case as sense-obj ect of the
1957] THE TWO CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & ,,GENITIVE & GERUND" 87
gerund was formerly replaced by the accusative case. , The result of the new
transition is to appear in the ordinary word-order : the subject and the verb.
We have seen in S 44 that some sporadic instances of this transition were already
found at the end of the founteenth century when the case-endings of nouns had
been levelled in certain positions. But we might agree with Jespersen (M.E.G.
V. S 9. 41) in afiirming that not till 1700, or somewhat earlier than that, was the
intrinsic change universally observed.
It is not the main purpose of the present study to make elaborate inquiries
into the vaxious reasons why the common or accusative case has been substituted
for the genitive as sense-subject of the gerund. Below we are going to remark
only briefly the main circumstances that have brought about the change. 64
S 49. a. Sometimes it seems to be practically immaterial to the general
meaning whether an -ileg form is interpreted as a gerund or a participle. The
use of an accusative before an apparent gerund can often be attributed to the
psychological fact that it may also be considered a participle. This circumstance
directly concerns the present study, and so will ' be observed more fully later,
especially in S 53.
b. There has for centuries been a strong disinclination in English to make
the genitive form in -s of a noun that denotes an impersonal or lifeless thing.
This accounts for the abundance of instances where the gerundial subj ects in the
common case do not denote persons or living creatures (cf. S 44 and example
(2) under S 47).
(1) No man ever heard of opium leadileg into delirium tremens.-De
Quincey. Confessions of an Opium-Eater [Jespersen] .
(2) Comelius...re-read as he walked the curt note which had led to this
jaurney being undertaken.-Hardy, L fe's Little lronies, "A Tragedy of Two
Ambitions" iv.
(3) There is no possibility of my suspicions beileg wrong.-Id., Alicia's
Diary v.
(4) Even the mere senses...attest to this truth about vivacity going with
differentiation.-Chesterton, As I Was S_ aying, "About Shamelessness."
To example (3) the circumstance remarked under c below may also be applied.
Next c down to e concerns the morphological restraints that are inherent
in the English language,
c. The common case and the genitive are formally identical in most plural
nouns, as well as in the personal pronoun her (cf. S 45). Phonologically there
is no distinction between the two categories in ModE. Even the modern orthographic device of writing kings for the common case plural and kings' for the
genitive plural, as well as king's for the genitive singular, had not been estab61 The observation made in the following section mainly depends on Jespersen, "On Ing"
(S. P. E. Traet XXV. p. 155 ff.), Id., M. E. G. V. SS9.4-9.7, Curme, "History of the English
Gerund" (Englische Studien XLV.), and Id., Syntax p. 485ff.
88
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
[October
lished' till the eighteehth century. This formal identity has certainly contributed
to the feeling that a common case may be' used as sense-subject of a gerund.
(5) Mrs. Benuet..,had calculated on his daughters remainileg at , Netherfield till the following Tuesday... .-Austen, Pride and Prejudice vii.
(6) The objection to female juries never was an objection to juries beil g
female.-Chesterton, As I, Was Sayileg, "About Shamelessness."
The use in example (5) is especially remarkable, because it is seen in the work
by Jane Austen, who is so conspicuous in favouring the "genitive and gerund"
construction.
d. It is impossible to form genitives of sorne pronouns, such as all, both,
each, this, that,･himself, etc., or some adjectives used as nouns, such as (the) rich,
(the) Eleglish, etc. So these words naturally precede gerunds in the caseless fonTls,
though the phenomena are of rather rare occurrence.
(7) He wouldn't hear of that beileg possible.-Dickens, Dombey and Sole
[ Jespersen] .
(8) But. Mr. Morris, ain't you clear forgot about ihis beileg my day ofl?
-Caldn'ell, Georgia Boy, "Handsome Bro vn's Day Off."
(9) I"m for us Eleglish stickileg together when we're abroad.-Maugham
Cosmopolitans, "Mr. Know-All."
In the last example En,glish can be interpreted as apposition to us, and so
the instance might have to be dealt with under e below. Anyhow it is a striking
case where the use of the genitive is unavailable.
We may be allowed to mention the following example of the special collocation under this heading.
(lO) I remember a fine thing by the Poet Laureate, something about
there being more faith in honest doubt.. . .-A. Huxley, Rotuuda, "The Tillotson
Banquet" iii.
Of this expression "ihere+gerund" Jespersen (M. E. G. V. 9.7g) remarks that
there are only two quotations to be cited before the nineteenth century, one from
Defoe ((1722)) and the other from Joseph Butler ((1736)).
e. We' have some difficulty'in forming genitives of word-groups. As sensesubject of the gerund, such a' word-group only naturally stands before it in the
caseless , form, though this is also. rather a special phenomenon.
( 1 1) He would not hear of Mrs. Mackeuzie aud her daughter quittiltg his
house.-Thackeray, ' The Neze'cowes [Jespersen] . '
(12) A note posted by her in Budmouth Regis at daybreak has reached
me this afternoon-thanks to ' the fortunate chance of one of the servalets call-
ileg for letters in .town .to-day.-Hardy, Alicia's Diary vli.
S 50. When the sense-subject of the gerund is' a'personal pronoun, the use
of the accusative form as distinct from the genitive comes to 'be questioned. As
has been mentioned in S 47, a personal pronoun has preserved the use of the old
genitive 'betteir here'than a' noun. This is because the per 0rial pionouns are
more distinct and complete in their morphological system and, .,unhke nouns,
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS : "ACCUSATIVB & PARTICIPLE" & "GENITIVB & GERUND" 89
have the genitive singulars distinguished from the genitive plurals, except in
the case of your.
Nevertheless, the accusative case of a personal pronoun came to be used
before a gerund, generally in the latter half of the nineteenth century.65 The
new use is suited to colloquial, or sometimes vulgar or dialectal, style. The
pronoun has occasionally acquired the capability of being emphasized according
to the demand of the context. Before making further inquiries, we shall see
some examples.
(1) There could be no harm in iheut 'alkileg together.-Hazlitt, Liber
A ,noris [Jespersen].
(2) '･ What's the use o' you lookil ' at it?-G. Eliot, The Mill o,, the Floss
V. ii.
(3) Papa did not care about them learni,eg.-Thackeray, He,try Esmo,id
[Poutsma] . '
(4) Instead of me lalking to you, you ought to be talking to me.-Bennett,
Hoze' to Live au 24 Hours [Jespersen].
It may be admitted that such use is generally found in colloquial style. Indeed the accusative pronouns in these contexts are liable to be emphasized and
pronounced with a simple, vivid tone. The sentence quoted as example (2) is
spoken by an uneducated person and so has a vulgar and dialectal tone. The
last example is of special interest, for me before talkileg is clearly contrasted with
you and has been given a strong stress.
Now let us consider what psychological factor has induced the speaker or
writer to use such expression. Suppose that the genitive their, instead of them,
were to be used in example (1). In the sentence "There could be no harm m
their 'alkileg together," we might feel the combination between their and u'alking so close as to . produce the . sense of fairly compact unity. On the contrary,
the ongmal combmation "m them u,alking" is not so close. We can even read
it putting a slight pause between them and (e;alkiltg. What is really meant by
the sentence is inferred 'to be something like "There could be tlo harm if' they
were to walk together," though the resultant expression is more straightforward.66
Generally speaking, the combination between the accusative pronoun and the
-ileg form is rather loose, and consequently has less of the synthetic sense which
is usually felt in an ordinary gerundial phrase. We might ･proceed a step farther
to conclude that the writer has expressed the -iltg form after the pronoun with
some vague sense that it is of the nature of a present participle. It seems possible to trace some influence of the participle in the subconsciousness of the speaker
who has used the -iltg form in such a concrete and colloquial way of expression.
68 espersen (M.E.G. V. S 9.7*) remarks that among the accusative pronouns it was isolatedly
the first to be found before a gerund. This is probably due to ' the particular circuinstance
that the use of the form cts was established much later than that of the other genitive pronouns.
It can be exemplified from as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, as follows :
I never had so much as one thought of it being the hand of God.-Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
[Jesperson]. ,
**
outsma, Gram.' xlx. S 6. I, VI; Lvl. S36. II.
90
[October
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
S 51. The inference drawn in the previous section further leads us to consider the three examples that belong to much earlier periods. They have been
quoted by Curme (Syntax p. 489) and Van der Gaaf ("The Gerund Preceded by
the Common Case" S 17) as illustrating the earliest instances of the kind,of, gerund-
construction which contains an accusative pronoun as sense-subject.
(1) Humbly requyryng...my sayd lord to take no displaysure (=displeasure) at me so presumyng.-Caxton, The Epilogue to Dictes aud Sayings
of the Philosophers ((14. .)) [Kellner].
(2) I would have no mans honestye empayred ( =impaired) by me telling.-Latimer, Seven Sermons ((1549)) [Van der Gaa .
(3) I trust they will beare with me ze'ritileg in the vulgar speach (=speech) .
-Puttenham, The Arte of Eleglish Poesie ((1589)) [Van der Gaa .
In each of these quotations it would be possible to perceive some pause between
me and the following -ing form (in example (1), preceded by the adverb so), and
so regard the latter as a present participle that is expressed cumulatively as predi-
catival adj unct of the preceding pronoun. We can assume that this loose but
concrete expression with the participle which had been found in the earlier period
came to commingle with the "common case and gerund" construction which
began to be popularized about the end of the seventeenth century. The result
of this process we see revealed in such examples as have been mentioned in the
preceding section. The reality of the expression must be inquired into from
the psychologic or stylistic point of view.
CHAPTER IV
The Convergency of the Two Constructions
S 52. ･In S 49 we have mentioned the influence of the participle-construction as the most important of the circumstances that have brought about the
"common case and gerund" construction. Now we are in a position of investigating the individual cases where the sphere of the gerund-construction has been
trespassed upon by that of the participle-construction or inversely the latter has
been absorbed by the former. Hitherto we have endeavoured to trace some
such phenomena diachronically. But so far as the modern usage is concerned,
¥ve cannot but recognize that the synchronic method has to be adopted. The
process to the new construction did not take place till the modern gerund-construction had been universally established in the late ModE period.
We shall proceed with the observation, with special reference to the three
ty es of syntactic combination. They are Type A: " reposiuon+(pro)noun+
mg " Type B "verb+prepositron+(pro)noun+ mg and Type C: "verb+
(pro)noun+-ing." By the "verb+preposition" in Type
we mean a somewhat
closely fixed group where the verb requires a certain preposition so that the t vo
elements may semantically correspond to one transitive verb. '
1957] THE TWO CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSA1::VE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIV1
& GERUND 91
S 53 Type A "prepositron+(pro)noun+-ing" has already been exemplified in SS 49-51. Here we shall only consider those examples which involve
some questionable respects. First let us compare the following couple of examples.
(1) Do you know the Jupiter's silly w'ords, about the bug being of solid
gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy?-Poe, The Gold-Bug.
(2) The theologian used the old quip about a philosopher beileg like a blind
man, in a dark room, Iooking for a black cat-which wasn't there.-J. Huxley,
Male Stalrds Alone, "Life Can Be Worth Living."
In example (1) the prepositional phrase introduced by about is parenthetically
separated with the commas from the other part of the sentence and so there is
felt a more or less unity of its own. Accordingly the combination 'between the
bug and being is considered comparatively close, forming a nexal relation where
beileg is naturally interpreted as a gerund. In example (2), on the other hand,
the prepositron about Is combmed with the precedmg "the old quip" nearly as
closely as with the following "a philosopher." The next being is further combined
to "a philosopher" with much the same closeness. The whole structure, therefore, is expressed in a cumulative style, and being is invested with some nature
of a present participle. At least, we may suppose, the reason that the writer has
not used "a philosopher's being" here is that he has not intended to have recourse
to a synthetic expression by means of a gerund but to a 'looser but more concrete
participial expression.67 At the same time he has subconsciously preferred the
construction composed of the concrete deternrined and the ' abstract determiner
to the one composed of the concrete determiner and the abstract determined.
Although the latter may be more logical than the former, it is the meaning of
the former that the reader is more readily accustomed to adjusting.68 It is thus
upon a basis both stylistic and psychologic that being in example (2) had better
be understood as a participle.
Another obuple of examples should be compared.
(3) When the soprano soloist came in. Paul forgot even the nastiness
of his teacher's being there.-Cather. Youth aud the Bright Medusa, "Paul's
Case."
(4) Winterbourne had now begun to think simply of the craziness, form
a sanitary point of view, of a delicate yowag girl loulegileg away the evening
in this nest of malaria.-H. James, Daisy Miller ii.
In example (3) we have the apparent gerundial construction with the genitive
teacher's as sense-subj ect of the gerund being.69 It is inferred that the writer
eT Jespersen (M.E.G. V. S9.64) attributes the use of the common case in such an mstance
to the vague idea of the combination which is unfit to be expressed by means of the genitrve
case whose character is definite. There is some truth in this observation, in so far as the functional feature of the case is concerned.
68 Sandmann, Subject enrd Predicate p. 231.
69 ccording to the research by Fnes (A merican Euglish Grammar p. 76f.) concerning modern
American usage, there are recorded 20 instances, including both standard and vulgar ones,
with nouns in the common case, while only one standard instance with a genitive noun. It
seems, however, that the range of the l raterials adopted is too limited to convey the real state
of the usage.
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
has used the genitive here to clearly express the meaning that what was nasty to
Paul was the fact that his teacher was there, not his teacher herself. The distinct
gerundial construction here serves to get rid of any ambiguity that would be
felt in the expression with the common case "the nastiness of his leacher being
there." In example (4), indeed, the reader feels such ambiguity in the meaning
of "the craziness..,of a gerl loungmg " or rather we should say that the whole
sentence itself has been expressed in a rather indefinite style. Amid the general
indefiniteness, however, we see the descriptive force displayed intensively in
both "a delicate young girl" and "lounging." It may be admitted that the writer
has expressed lowaging in this context with the sense that it is rather a present
participle. This also shows that the modern frequency of the common case in
this kind of construction is largely due to the writer's psychology of intending
to invest the following -ileg form with some of the participial nature.
S 54. Of examples that illustrate Type B : "verb+preposition+(pro)noun+
-ileg," some contain construction
unquestionably clear in their nexal character
as gerund-constructions. So in the well-quoted "I iftsist upole Miss Sharp ap-
pearing" (Thackeray, Va,eity Fair xi),70 "Miss Sharp appearing" is evidently
equivalent to "that Miss Sharp will appear." But these are not all the cases.
There are others where we feel more or less of the participial nature in the -ing
forms used after the common cases.
(1) I must object to this witness beileg allowed to enter the box,-Haggard,
Mr. Meeso, 's Will [Poutsma] .
Cf. : (2) He had no obj ection to your expecting a little humility of him.
-H. James. Daisy Miller ii.
(3) Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along
the coast?-Poe, The Gold-Bug.
Cf. : (4) Do not be alarmed if you should hear of his having been to me.
-Austen, Pride aud Prejudice vii.
When we read example (1) or (3), we naturally ut a slight pause between
the noun and the -i,eg fonn. We can feel that "this witness" and "any unportant
treasure" are considerably emphasized and are loosely supplemented with "beileg
allowed"' and "bee, g unearthed." Either bei,eg is therefore tinged with some
of the participial character,71 By the way, the form te'itness, as against wit,eess's,
in example (1), may be explained phonologically 'to be due to the principle of euphony which has caused the speaker to avoid the double sibilant in [witnisis] .
For the form ireasure, as against treasure's, in example (3) , compare S 49 b.
Now we may once again consider the pattern "thilek of+ (pro)noun+-ing"
that has been described in SS 30. 31. It can be judged, indeed, that the -ileg
form here is genetically a participle. But the gerund-construction in analogous
types has been universalized, so that the ' -ing form in that pattem has somele Cf. : .And when we saw this he absolutely insisted on my having it.-Maugham. Cakes
'* For example (3), turthermore, compare example (3) under S 30.
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE" & "GENITIVE & GERUND 93
times come to be felt as a gerund. This is a phenomenon especially seen in polite
speech when the sense-subj ect is expressed by a personal pronoun.72 The fouowing are some of the instances.
(5) And to thil k of your beil g up all night and then not able to get a
decent breakfast!-Cather, Obscure Desiileies. "Neighbour Rosicky" i.
(6) She never ihoughi of his lovileg her; that would be-unnatural!Galsworthy, The Dark Flou;er, "Spring" ili.
¥Ve may also mention an example of the synonymous pattern.
(7) I can't bear the thought of his stayileg on in that odious house by him-
self.-Maugham, Cakes alid Ale xix.
In these examples the content of the thought has been expressed as a synthetic unity by means of the "genitive and gerund" construction. This is one
of the cases where the sphere of the gerund-construction has, as it were, absorbed
that of the participle-construction.
S 55. As to Type C: "verb+(pro)noun+-ing," we must first observe instances where the use of the verbs is analogous to that of "think of" Iast mentioned
in the previous section, that is, where we may see the same trace of transition
from the participial to the gerundial corlstruction. The use of the individual
verbs in the following examples should be compared with ,the corresponding use
exemp]ified in S 24.
( 1) Fancy their askin' you to ride your bicycle with them.-Maugham,
Cakes aud Ale v.
(2) I do remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the implacability
of his resentments, of his having an unforgiving temper.-Austen. Pride
aud Prejudice xvi.
(3) I can hardly uliderstalid a young Frenchmale's not enteri,eg the army.
-Meredith, Lord Ormo,ct alid his Amileta [poutsma].
(4) Mrs. Driffield didn't half like his comileg here.-Maugham, Cakes ard
Ale xxiii.
(5) Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?-Hardy, Tess xi.
The verb fancy, as in example (1), semantically requires the predication of
some descriptive action or behaviour about a person that is the object of mental
picturing, and so we may assume that its proper construction should be participial. The use of their, instead of them, in the example, has made askile*" appear
as a gerund. At the same time it ought to be noticed that the general tone of
the sentence has turned rather intellectual, as compared with the emotional tone
of example (2) under S 24 .73 In the other examples, where the verbs denote more
7g poutsma, Gram. Lvl S 37 b).
T8 It is especially remarkable that both of the two constructions are found in the same work
by Maugham. The following should be compared with example (1) above.
I heard she'd gone to service at the vicarage. Fancy her being there still l-Cahes aud
Her here might be interpreted either as genitive or as accusative ; but judging from the general
tone of the quotation, we should like to regard it as accusative.
94 THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY [October
intellectual state or activity, the nature of the construction is more likely to be-
come gerundial. Indeed the use of the genitive noun in example (3) may be older
than ' that of the corresponding common case, but it offers us a proof that such
a verb as uuderstalrd intrinsically requires the gerundial construction. Only as
to the verb like, as in example (4),. we may be able to judge upon the ground re-
marked m S 24 that the tendency rs m favour of "like hwa coming" rather than
"like his coming." The antonym dislike, as in example (5), is not so frequent
in this construction. In the quotation it is distinctly shown that the object of
dislike is the action "(my) kissing (you)," not the person that would be expressed
by "me."
Like dislike the semantically analogous hate and milrd are used with the same
kind of construction. In the follolving examples it would be noticed that the
-in;g forms have been invested with some of the participial character.
(6) I haie anyone listel ing when I'm telephoning.-Christie in My Best
Delective Story [Jespersen] .
(7) I'm sure 'e wouldn't milid you 'avin' a look at them.-Maugham,
Cakes aud Ale xii.
¥Vith the latter, moreover, compare the fallowing.
(8) I should not mind their talking about me.-Black, The Princes of
Thule [Jespersen] . '
S 56. An interesting case is observed in the variants of the construction
after prevent. It can now be used in the three types of structure: a "I prevented
him from goileg," b "I prevented his goil g," and c "I prevented him going." Of
them, OED (s,v. PREVEI:"T v. 7b, 8b) explains that c appears to be short for a,
perhaps influenced by b, as though to say that c has been,developed through the
blending of the two other types a and b.74 The strange fact is that the quotations
given by OED itself fail to justify th.is assumption, though we must admit that
the exemplification in this dictionary is not always based upon syntactic principles. The earliest quotation of c is dated 1689, 11'hile that of a is dated 1711
and that of b 1841. What is more, Van der Gaaf ("The Gerund Preceded by the
Common Case" S 16) grves an example of c dated still earlier than 1689. That is:
(1) If wisdome and princely authority be not by you used to prevelet
perilles appearilcg, we have cause to doubt of greater danger to follow.Queen Elizabeth, Letters ((1592)).
In this quotation "prevent perilles" is understood to convey a complete sense,
to which the sense of appearileg is added only complementally. The combination between perilles and appearil4g is much as loose as that between "greater
danger and "to follow" m the same sentence. In spite of Van der Gaaf,
therefore, appearil g here should be regarded as a participle ; and we can see
that such a participle-construction after prevent made its appearance as early
as the sixteenth century.
Now, in PE usage, the type "I prevented him goileg" is not so popular as the
" AlsO compare Poutsma. Gram. xlx S 6 m, Lvl S 35 a) 2).
1957] THE Two coN. STRUCTIONS; "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIVE & GERUND" 95
types I prevented h mfrom goel g" and "I prevented hwa going," and of the latter
the type I prevented him from gotng" seems the commoner 75 It is presumable that "I prevented him going" is felt too vague for such a matter-of-fact state-
ment, and has come to be superseded by the more definite expression "I prevented him fron goileg," which is also more analylic than "I prevented his goileg."76
The result is, we might say, that the analylic style of the old participial expression, that is c, has been turned into the more explicit form of the new gerundial
expression, that is a. Below we shall exemplify each of the three types, arranging them in the developmental order of c, b and a.
c. (2) The tide prevented me going to the wreck.-Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
[ Jespersen] .
(3) What can prevent us gettileg married ?-G. Moore, Esther Waters
[Poutsma] .
(4) Mrs. Bennet was prevented replying by the entrance of the footman
with a note for Miss Bennet.-Austen, Pride and Prejudice vli.
b. (5) You shall not know that, if I can prevent your knowing it.-Dickens,
A Tale of Tu'o Cities 111. xiv.
(6) You must see how desirable a wife like Miss Halborough would be,
to prevent my becomileg a mere vegetable.-Hardy, Ltfe's Little lrot,tes "A
Tragedy of Two Ambitions" iv.
(7) Thrift in itself is always a thirst to make alL things thrive to pre
vent their beileg wasted, or, in other words, destroyed.-Chesterton. A s I
Was Saying, "About Bad Comparisons."
a. (8) I wonder whether the memory of her compassian prevented him
from cuttileg his th}oat.-Conrad, Amy Foster.
(9) I used all my determination to preve,et the bitter jibes from passileg
my lips.-Maugham, Cakes alid Ale xvii.
( lO) Tramping, too, prevents the grass from gettieeg coarse and rough.
-J. Huxley, Ma,
Stauds Alolce, "Climate and Human History."
Example (4) contains a passive construction, where the -ing form replying
appears as predicative of the subject "Mrs. Bennet," and thus shows that it is
evidently a participle. This structural potentiality offers us another proof that
the construction in c is participial.77 It is also perceivable that the use of b is
most restricted, for the type is now only ready to be used lvhen the sense-subTs Jespersen, M.E.G. V. S 9.98'
Thrs type b rs fit to express a slightly diflerent meaning from what is usually meant by the
two other types. It should properly be used when the verb indicates the notion of provlding
beforehand against the occurrence of some trouble (cf. OED, s.v. PREVENT v. 8; Poutsma Gram.
xlx S 32 b)), not merely the general idea of stopping or hindrance. Practically, h wever
the difierence seems too delicate to be observed. This is another reason that this t e is less
T' It is a noteworthy fact that this participle-construction with the verb prevent is found
in Jane Austen, vvho else vhere uses the "genitive and gerund" construction so frequently
In the follow ing quotation from the same work, therefore, we might judge the construction
to be particlpiaL Interpreting her as accusative.
xi er indifferent state of health unhappily preve'cts her beilrsg in town.-Pride a'rd Prejudice
96
THE ANNALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
[October
ject of the gerund is to be expressed by a personal pronoun.
S 57. We must next observe the three verbs ¥vhose syntactic features are
fairly parallel with those of prevelet : that is, excuse, forgive and pardole. These
verbs, too, are often found introducing the "(pro)noun+-ileg" construction.
Only it is now not so usual; the commoner pattern' is "excuse (forgive, pardon)
object+for+gerund." They are also used with the construction where the
sense-subj ect of the gerund is expressed by a genitive case. Neither is this use
very .usual now. Anyhow we have the three types: a "excuse etc +accusative
+ elcg " b "excuse etc +gemtive+ ing,'" and c "excuse etc.+accusative+for
+-ing." Below will be given some instances of the respective types.
a. ( 1) I will therefore frst shew that they had no such ignorance that
could excuse them admitiilege that he ¥vas a superior.-The Archpriest Controversy ((1601)) [Van der Gaa (2) Would you excuse me askileg for a cup more coffee?-Dickens. David
Copperfield [Jespersen] .
(3) I forgive him siltkitvg my own poor truck ?-¥Vycherley. The PlaileDealer ((1616)) [Poutsma].
(4) Moost humblie beseking...the Kyng and also the Quene to pardole
me so presumyleg.-Caxton. The History of Jaso,c ((c. 1477)) [Kellner].
(5) Pardo,e me sayi,eg it.-Tennyson, The Prilecess [Poutsma].
b. (6) He must excuse my beileg rather in a hurry.-Collins. The Womale
ile White [Jespersen] .
(7) If you'll forgive my saying so, sir,..,your proposal seems to me very
rough-and-ready justice.-Galsworthy, The Whiie Monkey [Poutsmaj .
c. (8) The people may be excused for folloze'ileg tradition only.-Jowett.
The Dialogues of Plato [OED] .
(9) Forgive me for bringileg you here.-Dickens. Mariile Chuzzlewit
[Poutsma] .
( lO) Pardon me for lveglecting to profit by your advice.-Austen. Pride
aud Prejudice xviii.
It would be proper to infer that the a type is of the oldest origin and that
the -ileg form there is a present participle which is appended to the accusative
object as predicatival adjunct. The decisive point lies in the semantic and pronunciational division. For example, in "excuse me askileg..." we feel it possible to
,,
divide "asking...
from "excuse me" and interpret the whole group as meaning
"excuse me if I ask.. .". Such division is out of the question in the case of "excuse
,ny askileg..." of the b type, where my and asking have formed a synthetic unit.
"Excuse my askileg..." may be more logically constructed than "excuse me asking...", and so probably be preferred by correct speakers. But after all "excuse
me for askiltg. . . " of the c type has come to stay in standard PE as the most favour-
ed construction. We should notice that the a type is naturally as much suited
to the genius of English syntax in being as analyiic as the c type ; only the difference is that in the latter the annalytic nature is explicitly displayed.
1957] THE TWO CONSTRUCTIONS ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE & GENITIVE & GERUND" g7
CH'APTI ;R V
Conclusion
S 58. It is needless to say that the range of w'ords 'and word-groups hitherto
taken up as materials for our study, not to speak of examples quoted, is far from
exhaustive. Since it is our humble intention, however, to make an attempt to
trace the most predominant tendencies in the development of the constructions,
we shall be content for the present to make an end of the cursory observation.
Now, reviewing it in retrospect, we shall sum up the prominent features so
as to clarify the main routes by which the constructions have attained to the
modem stage. In OE the present participle had a distinct form of its own, ending in -elide, as against -uleg or -ing, the form of the verbal subst ntive or geruhd.
The former had its syntactically verbal capacity developed much earlier than
the latter. The participle was already able to function as predicatival adj unct
of the object after some verbs of perception, when the gerund still remained a
genuine noun. With this verbal capacity the participle had a particular stylistic value that has helped to keep the "accusative and'participle" constrution
gro ving steadily ever since the earliest period. It has made the construction
fit for concrete and expressive description as an essential factor for the formation
of cumulative style-the style so characteristic of English syntax,
The morphological transition in later periods, however, was against the
participle, whose proper form came to be absorbed by that of the gerund in -ileg
in the course of the ME period. In this respect the participle, at the cost of its
own form, contributed to have the gerund develop its verbal force. ' This new
syntactic capacity of the gerund was gradually displayed from the end of the
twelfth century onwards. About two centuries after that the common case began
to take the place of the g nitive as a result of the general decay of inflexional
endings. This indeed strengthened the verbal nature of the gerund; but its later
progress was rather sluggish. Parallel with the earliest type of expressing "obj ect
+ gerund," such as OE boc-reedileg, there arose a temporal- type of "subject+
gerund,".such as sule-risileg. This phenomenon, mainly perceived from the
fourteenth to the sixteenth century, represents the early stage of the compound.
The modem suppie and efficient construction was not fully developed till about
the end of the seventeenth century. But once established, it has succeeded in
becoming a favourite construction in both literary and colloquial speech.
S 59. Yet it is worth noticing once more that we still sometimes see the
original synthetic nature of the gerund-construction fairly preserved in its modern
outer form.
(1) This comer of the globe
vas predestined to be the cradle of the
modem world-by its climate, by its great rivers, by the fact of its beileg the
original home of wheat, by its being a natural meeting-place for different
98
THE A2q:NALS OF THE HITOTSUBASHI ACADEMY
[October
streams of culture brought by different migrations of men, east and west
as well as north and south.-J. Huxiey Man Stands Alolee "Climate and
Human History."
As contrasted with the abstract, synthetic compactness of such gerundial
phrases, we can see distinctly the loose, concrete force of participial phrases, as
in the iollowing example.
(2) He was j ust about to go down when the sight of the main-dech stirri,,g, heaving up, and changileg into splinters before his eyes, petrified him on
the top step.-Conrad. Yoeith.
¥Ve may consider it possible to trace both diachronically and synchronically
these different kinds of stylistic value representing the two constructions.
S 60. After the time of Shakespeare, the use of the "accusative and participle" construction, "¥vhether introduced by a verb or a preposition, became
suddenly more frequent than ever before. Somewhat later than that the gerundconstruction began to make no less remarkable progress. It even grew so overwhelming that some earlier participial expressions have resulted in getting absorbed in the gerundial pattem. There are of course instances where the transition in the opposite direction has taken place. But we should like to add the
two more examples, which show how naturally participles may come to appear
gerundial in some particular contexts.
(1) The first thing I heard was Preacher Ha ,shaw' saying that old Uncle
Jeff Davis Fletcher...had gone over into the next country to visit some sick
relations ior a few days.-Caldwell, Georgia Boy, "The Day We Rang the
Bell."
(2) The next thing he w'as conscious of was lying in Polly's bed, and Polly
beliding over him wringing out bath towels in hot water and putting them
on his chest.-Cather, Obscure Destiley, "Neighbour Rosicky" vi.
The expresslon m example (1) suggests as its psychologrcal prototype the
construction "I heard Preacher Hawshaw sayt,tg " and that m example (2)
,,
the construction "He was co,,scious of Polly beudi,eg...
. We would rather say
that even in the actual expressions the -ing forms are participles. But in ex-
ample (2) there is an external proof against this assertion. Polly bendileg is structurally parallel with lyileg, whose function is evidently substantival, not adj ecti-
val. As in this case, an apparent gerund is sometimes a participle in disguise,
and this is also a fact that can be observed through the history of English syntax.
S 61. In the course of the history we have seen some occasional expressions
whose origin should be ascribed to the influence of foreign usage. For instance,
the ablative absolute construction in Latin gave rise to some analogous expressions in English which were to expand the scope of the participial, or sometimes
gerundial, construction. The appearance of some new idioms with gerunds
1'as due to the imitation of the French g6rondif in -ant, which no doubt stimulated
the verbal development of the English gerund. But these were no more than
1957] THE Two CONSTRUCTIONS: "ACCUSATIVE & PARTICIPLE ' & "GENITIVE & GERUND" 99
subsidiary phenomena. Without any such foreign influence, we dare to assume,
the two English verbals would have had the potentiality of launching themselves
upon the main currents. On a broad survey we should be allowed to conclude
that the two constructions have been developed spontaneously in the native
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(It is with my most heartfelt thanks that I here mention the names of
those who kindly lent me some of the books enumerated below : Dr. Sanki
lchikawa, Mr. Fumio Nakajima. Professor of Tokyo University, Miss Masako
Isshiki. Professor of Tsuda College, and Mr. Kenzo Kihara, Assistant Professor of Ochanomizu University.
The abbreviations which appear in the thesis are shown in brackets
after the respective items.)
I. BOOKS AND PAPERS CONSULTED
Bcgholm, N. Eleglish Speech from au Historical Poilet of View. Copenhagen.
1939.
Brunner, K. Die englische Sprache. 2 Bde. Halle. 1950, '51.
Callaway, M., JR. The I,efueitive ile Anglo-Saxole. Washington. 1913.
Curme G O "Hrstory of the English Gerund." Englische Siudien XLV. 1912.
ynlax. Boston. 1931.
" "'
Delcourt, J. 1leitiation d l' tude historiqeee de l'aleglais. Paris. 1944. [Initiation]
Ein nkel, E. Historische Syletax. Strassbury, 1916.
Ewert, A. The French Langeiage. London.
Fowler, H. W. The King's Eleglish. Oxford. 1930.3
odern Eleglish Usage. Oxford, 1937.
Fries, C. C. American Eeeglish Grammar. N. Y. 1940.
Huchon, R. Histoire de la langue anglaise. Tome II. Paris, 1930.
" "
Jespersen, O. A Modern English Grammar on Hislorical Prileciples. Part V. Copenhagen. 1940. [M.E.G,]
On Ing." S.P.E. Tract XXV. 1926.
Kellner, L. Historical Outlilees of Eleglish Syntax. London. 1892.
Koch, C. F. Die Satzlehre der englische Sp;ache. Cassel . 1878.2 [Satzlehre]
Koziol, H. Gruudzuge der Syletax der mittelenglischen Stabreiudichtwagen. Wien
& Leipzig, 1932.
Kruisinga, E. A Haudbook of Present-day English. Part II. 1. Groningen. 1932.5
Kruisinga, E. & Edades P. A. A,, English Grammar. Vol. I. Part I. Groningen,
1947.7
Langenhove, G. C, van. On the Origin of the Gerutid in El glish. Gand. 1925.
[The Origiltal of the Gerurd]
Matzner, E. Eltglische Grammatik. Theil 111. Berlin. 1885.3
100 THE ANNALs oF THE HIToTsuBAsHI AcADEMY ［Octobe−
Moss6，E Es卿∬64’観βhiε∫oガアθ4θ」￠傭9％θα％9嬬β・Lyon・1947・
” ”研s嬬64θZ￠か耀ρ6吻h7α吻％6‘2舵＋勿1あ吻6ρ76s6撹’6π8β7−
1πα％づg％6，Partie IL ］Paris． 1938，［F．P。］
Poutsma，H．∠4（37α形解σ7qズ肋！θハ404θγ％E％ψsん，Part I。2。＆Part IL Sec・IL
Groningen．1929，2》26。［（｝7α燃］
Regula，M． （｝7％％4」69％π9 ％箆4 G7銘偽吻70ゐ♂θ規θ 461 ＆ソ％≠α飢 H：ei（lelberg・ 195L
Sandmam，M。5％の60孟σ嘱P16耽伽，Edinburgh．1954．
Sweet，H． ∠41V伽E％8漉h G■α彫吻α7。2vols，Oxford，1892，’98，
Tmka。B． 0雑≠h6＆y撹砿げ魏6E％8あsh761δノンo規C砺≠o％≠o Z）削4碗。Prague。
1930．
van derGaaf．W．“The GerundPrecededbythe Common Case。”勘8Zづsh5伽伽s
X，1928，
Visser，F．T． ∠45汐初砿ヴ∫hθE％8漉ん五α，碧襯8θげ5ムTho綿αs Mo1β。Part I。Lou−
vain．1946．
Zandvoort，R．W．』11α励oo為q／E％gJづshσγα彿耀1，Groningen。1945、
II． DICTIONARIES CONSULTED
Bosworth，」．＆Toler，T．N。，ed♂ オ％z4％gJo−5α％o％1万oあo箆σぴ．Oxfor（1。1908−21。
［A．一S．D，］
Mathews，M，M．，ed． zl Df痂o郷型げ∠4彫θ7ゼoα初s卿ε。Chicago．1951。［D．A．］
五lurray，」．，＆others，ed．，Thθ0ガbγ4E麗g露sh1）露≠ガoπα驚ソ・Oxfor（i21888匹一一1933・
［OED］
Stratmann，F．H．，e（1，z4ハ4嘱4Zβ一E％8」ゼsh D歪o∫ゼo襯，ッ．Oxford，189L
III．EDITIONミOF OE＆ME TEXTS gUOTED FROM
Brown，E．W．，ed． ThθGosφ6ZげS漉卿∫oh銘ゼ％砂6s渉一5砺o％。Boston＆Lon（ion．
1906。
Klaeber，F．，ed．B60測梶ゲ．Boston．1922．3
M皿er，T．，e（i。Thθ0配E伽8傭h F6γsづo％σB64♂s EooZβs彪sあo謡Hづs≠01ッげ≠h6E％8傭ん
Pθoμ8。E．ET。S．1890．［Bβ4θ］
Morris，R．＆Skeat，W。W．，ed．5ρ60勉鰯φ勘吻Eπ8Jfεh。Part L Oxford，1926．
Moss6，F．，ed． ハ4研％6」4θZ’㈱gZ漉s4％g％oッ6％屍gβ。1。Viei1−anglais．II， Moyen‘
anglais．Paris，1945，’49。
Plummer，C．，ed．丁別oヴ渉hθ5礁o％Chlo漉oJθs Pα7詔6」，Oxfor（i．1892。
Skeat，W．W．，ed．Th6Co吻漉Wo廊q／σ6ψ砂Ch側σ6γ・Oxf・rd・192L
” ” Thθ（｝osφ6」αoσ014伽g∫05α協M観hθω伽∠肋gJo−S砺o錫，6’o，Cam−
bridge． 1887．
” ” Pづ67s 云hθ PJoω勉の雑 απ4 R60hα14 診hθ R6476ss． Oxfor（i． 1924．